Guardian Angel from Hell
by Gryffith and Cloe
Summary: Currently up to Chapter Tweve, I think. In the trio's final year at Hogwarts, a mysterious girl appears out of thin air, is she friend or foe? Watch while she turns Hogwarts upside down. And changes time forever....
1. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter One

A/N and Disclamer:   
Cloe: Hello everybody, I think you'll not remember me, I am/was a newbie writer who started writing a Mary-Sue before she even knew what a mary-sue was, ah the horror, the horror.   
Gryffith: Shut up and stop annoying the nice people.   
Cloe: Aww and I was having fun too, meanwhile back at the ranch we should get on to what you people came here to see…read...whatever…our fanfic.   
Gryffith: Too bad. This fanfic deals a lot with time. No, it does not deal with Cloe being late all the time.   
Cloe: Ha ha you are just so very funny, I'd like to take this moment to announce that I am doing most of the humor in this lovely ficy so make of that what you will, ahem back to the point at hand, time. This fic starts out in 2023 but ends up…well you'll just have to read to find out...   
Gryffith: Uh-huh, many the pranks were a team effort! Oops...uh, what pranks?   
Cloe: It's called tact, my dear. I had better go on before Gryffith here blabs something big, like when har..hehe seems I'm just as bad.   
Gryffith: So you shouldn't talk. Oh, and btw, I'm writing most of it. So the scenes that you really like, thank me.   
Cloe: You may be writing most of it but who thought of the idea, most of the wonderful characters, and the ahem PLOT, me that's who, so nyah.   
Gryffith: ~grumble~ Can we get back to the *point* of this conversation?  
Cloe: That's a good idea. Now there* is* a shock, personally I don't think its that big but then that's me, so relax this is a long story, once you get into the first real chapter you'll know what I mean.   
Gryffith: It is long, I don't even know how many chapters yet. More than ten, though. Many more.   
Cloe: So if long fics scare you, just think of GoF and how long it was, trust me this is not going to be anywhere near that long.   
Gryffith: Oh I don't know. If you add in the possible sequel... I'll shut up now.  
Cloe: Possible? Ha, try certain, oh we do talk to much don't we?   
Gryffith: Yes you do. So, shut up. Anyway, the characters in this fanfic are for the most part new.   
Cloe: But the ones (and names, places, what have you) you recognize are not ours as much as we would like them to be.   
Gryffith: Well, duh, if you recognize the names, then they were some one else's to begin with!  
Cloe: Hey I was just making this into a disclaimer, so shut up.   
Gryffith: Then disclaim! Go ahead! I'm not stopping you.   
Cloe: I just did you prat, anyway we've talked enough, on with the show...be kind and review. Thank you and goodnight.  
  
Guardian Angel from Hell   
Prologue, A Set Up and Some Letters   
  
A Harry Potter Fan Fiction  
By Cloe and Gryffith  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
"Dear Dr. Granger:  
I am speaking to you on Circe's behalf. Her full name is Circe Miriam Malfoy, and yes, she is the daughter of Draco Malfoy and Sylvia Blake. As you should be aware, Draco is a typical politician and he still has several qualities that you may remember from Hogwarts, and Sylvia is a graduate from Durmstrang. There are rumors floating around that Lucius Malfoy set up the marriage, and I am inclined to believe it considering Durmstrang's history. I have concluded that Mr. Malfoy has tried the same parenting his father used on him, only in Circe's case it must have backfired and has given her the idea that what ever her father thinks must be wrong. After careful analysis, I have determined that she has a tendency to ignore authority, and is quite intelligent and clever. She does however seem to have a sense of humor, an improvement on the last generation, and has no problem with her lineage.   
I believe she has the right idea; Circe would be a great asset in your line of work in spite of her colorful heritage. She has inherited her father's lack of trust, however I believe that this is a byproduct of Malfoy's parenting techniques. Gain her trust, Hermione, and she could do some marvelous things, you can mark my word on it. Nevertheless, I feel I must warn you, her more prominent reason for applying to your college is you. As Draco's rival in both Hogwarts and politics, you present a unique opportunity for eloquent declaration of rebellion against her father. Attitude-wise, this may present a problem. And in light of that, do the wizarding world a favor and teach the girl some manners. She knows the name and function of every table instrument invented so no worries there, it's just that she wouldn't recognize respect if it knocked her upside the head and stared her in the face.  
  
Headmaster of Hogwarts,  
Professor R. J. Lupin  
June 30 2022."  
  
  
"Dear Dr. Granger:  
This would be Bixby Aylwin Weasley's résumé. As you might know, he is the son of our Minister of Magic, Ronald Weasley, whom I believe you are acquainted with. Hermione, this boy has his father's build, Fred's taste in pranks, and Bill's sense of fashion. And, believe it or not Bixby has somehow inherited Harry's dare devilish lack of common sense. I am sorry if it pains you to remember Harry, but Bixby is just like the hero minus the scar and Voldemort's antipathy.   
He is sharp and quick enough in the field, which might be expected, although I sadly cannot say the same for his attention span while in the classroom. I know I say this about all the students that I send to your department, but you should watch him; I believe his uncles Fred and George are sending him pickings from their joke shop every so often. They may be trying to get members of your department interested and therefore increase their capital. Just remember to be sure that your wand is your own before you use it.  
  
Headmaster of Hogwarts,   
Professor R. J. Lupin  
June 30 2022."   
  
  
"Dear Dr. Granger:  
Here is one of the best students in his class, Cameron Dunstan Zadah. I am the one sending Cameron your way, but only because his mother, Zorina Yarmille, switched him from Durmstrang before his seventh year. In case you did not know, Professor Karkaroff still focuses on the Dark Arts there. On the other hand, Cameron has extremely high marks and talent. He is a little bit quieter than you would think, but his mind still works, rest assured. If you make him earn your trust, I believe he can be a significant addition to your department.  
  
Headmaster of Hogwarts,  
Professor R. J. Lupin  
June 30 2022."  



	2. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Two

A/N and Disclaimer:  
Gryff: All righty then, this is where the actual story starts.   
Cloe: ::fanfare provided by moi:: Yep, about time to.   
Gryff: Oh shut up. It's not as if you wrote any of it! And I'm the one working on making the plot work too!   
Cloe: Hey lady I'll have you know I did write most of Chapter 1 ::in lower voice:: That's why it sucks so badly.   
Gryff: Yessiree, thank her all you want if you groan and decide to leave. Well, please don't. At least review to tell Cloe how she can write better.   
Cloe: Speaking of reviews we'd like to thank all the people who reviewed as of right now...all of 5 people, Leah, WeaselyTwinsFan, Alana, Mudblood_h8r (nice name Jess) and Haruka Mouse & Galadriel Antoinette who's review I didn't like much but its the thought that counts.   
Gryff: Anyway, if you do decide to read this, remember that everyone here is grown-up, settled down, and happy. For the most part at least. Ron is not married to Hermione. He's married to an intern he met on his way up the political ladder.   
Cloe: Hermione is not married at all, she's to busy working at saving the world.   
Gryff: Again and again and again. Well, helping to teach her students to do it for her. She's sick and tired of doing it herself.   
Cloe: Not that I blame her.   
Gryff: I don't blame her in the least. I mean, it must be irritating to clean up after people who misused the time technology that she invented.   
Cloe: No, no she didn't invent it until after they started screwing stuff up.   
Gryff: No, she was the one who invented the initial technology to go back in time. The later stuff is unique to the college.   
Cloe: ::gives her an evil eye:: We are never going to agree, even though I am right. but now its time for the disclaimer ::does a little song and dance:: Anything, anynames, anybody, you recognize are not ours, pretty much everything else is.   
Gryff: So there. Now don't give us any BS about shippers, or match-ups, cuz this fanfic goes on beyond the horizon...   
Gryff: Seriously, I am on the 11th chapter and i'm only about halfway done.   
Cloe: Hehe don't you mean Siriusly? By all fooling aside its true and we have a sequel all lined up on top of that.   
Gryff: And vague ideas for a sequel on top of that. If it all falls through. But, if no one reads it, no more will get posted.   
Cloe: Well over 50 people did read it but only 5 people reviewed it.   
Gryff: Correction then. REVIEW! If you don't tell us what you like or don't like, it will stay that way. Changing details means a few seconds of thoughtful typing, which I do enjoy, so if you want someone in leather, or black, or curlers, just let us know.   
Cloe: Uh-oh I don't think you should have said anything about leather, remember Cassandra Claire? And plus it'd be kinda hard to get any of them in leather, not that I wouldn't like it or anything.   
Gryff: Oh come on. I love imagining outfits for characters. And think what we have lined up for Snape!!!!!!!! Now, for the credit, that is all mine. But it's not until chapter 7, so keep reviewing.   
Gryff: ~smiles~ McGonagall and the others come first. Now these aren't nasty things. They merely...fit the various personalities.   
Cloe: A few of them have whats coming to them.   
Cloe: I have to say those were the most fun to think up, remember the ding bat?   
Gryff: Oh yes! So sweet! But, so far it is the teachers. If anyone has a grudge against students...~grins~ something can be arranged.   
Cloe: Ahhh look at the time, we've rambled enough, so shut up Gryffith and let them read AND review.   
Gryff: Just because it takes you weeks to write a scene doesn't mean i have to shut up! I think it's better if people DON'T shut up. It makes for better reviews.   
Cloe: I was telling you to shut up not them. And besides I wrote something yesterday , its not my fault I have writers block..   
Gryff: Whatever. I don't. Now shut up and let them read already!   
Cloe: Hey....I just said that! Oh damn you...fine go read please review.   
Gryff: ~smiles~that's right. Ta-ta for now!  
  
Guardian Angel from Hell   
Chapter One, Lets Meet the Press!  
  
A Harry Potter Fan Fiction  
By Gryffith and Cloe   
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
~9 months after the letters were sent, March 15, 2022~  
  
Dr. Hermione Granger smacked her wand on her podium trying to get the class's attention, but the entire class continued to either sleep or talk. "Ugh," the Professor muttered to herself in disgust, "This is what they call studying? They know that the exam is very soon, but all they do is waste time! Kids these days!"  
  
One girl, however, was reading a textbook assiduously, and even though this made Hermione feel at least somewhat better, this girl broke at least 15 school regulations just sitting there. With her appearance alone she was breaking at least 3 rules: her hair, dyed an ostentatious purple; her regulation uniform robes modeled non-regulation junk; and her boots certainly didn't fit within the code. The girl had her mismatched boots, one a tall silver-studded work of black leather art and the other a heavy-duty hiking boot, sitting on top of her desk.   
She smirked up at Hermione, simpered expressively, and proceeded to crack a big wad of tangerine-flavored gum, the smell being that strong and yet another rule broken. Hermione scowled back at her and the girl winked. Surprised, Hermione accidentally knocked a few papers off the podium and the class talked or slept on. Hermione bent down and swept up the papers expecting to see the girl sneering out from between her mismatched boots, but the girl was prodding a sleeping red head with her wand. He didn't move so the girl leaned over and whispered something in his ear after which he shot upright and Hermione had to bite her cheek to keep from smiling as the boy's ears tinged red an obvious family trait. He looked over to glare at the person who had interrupted his beauty sleep, his long ponytail tied at the base of his neck and giant shark tooth earring swinging, and scowled as he saw the girl.   
  
She passed him a note, a small smirk on her face, which widened into a full out grin when the boy eventually nodded his head. They both grinned at each other and then looked up at the front of the room. The girl winked at her professor again. Hermione sighed, what could they be up to today? She could only guess as the boy discreetly handed the girl something under the table. When she had it she walked up to Hermione's podium, attracting the glares of many in the class, to which she merely presented a broad smile.   
  
She rolled her eyes and muttered "Stereotypes," in a louder voice and, to Hermione this time, she said, "Having a bit of trouble, Ma'am? This ought to help in a hurry."   
  
Hermione would have stopped her and asked the girl what the heck she thought she was doing, but the girl's vividly crimson eyes, tinted so by colored contact lenses, startled her. The girl put something wrapped in a bit of parchment on to Hermione's podium and walked back to her seat ignoring the glares this time. Hermione unwrapped it and recognized a Weasley Wizarding Rocket. On one side of the parchment there was a message from Fred and George Weasley wishing Bixby a happy birthday, but on the other side four words were written: "Guaranteed to attract attention."   
  
Hermione barely swallowed a chuckle and slipped the rocket on a shelf in the podium. Back at her seat the girl tossed her purple pink hair and gave Hermione a look that implied, 'What are you waiting for?' Hermione frowned at the girl when she put her feet back on the desk and leaned back in her chair reading a book. The girl didn't look up but did raise her eyebrows to show she could still she Hermione. The red headed boy was poking the girl trying to get her to talk to him instead of read, with a sigh she snapped the book shut and turned to him with an indignant expression on her face. Hermione could see they were arguing and that she won because the boy finally gave up and threw up his hands in a "why do I even bother" fashion. Rolling her eyes, the girl went back to reading, a triumphant smirk on her face. Hermione decided right then to take the girls advise and light the rocket.  
  
The rocket took off and whizzed around the room like its life depended on it, it hit a brown haired boy smack in the head, fell to the floor and took off again this time running into peoples shoes it being only an inch off the ground. It ping-ponged back and forth, eventually hitting a desk leg at an angle where it was brought back up to head level. It was panic, people ran around the room ducking occasionally when it would fly by their heads. Someone had enchanted the doors and no one could figure out the counter spell so that they could leave. Finally it stopped and everyone who was crowded around the doors looked around to see who had stopped it, from their perspective it was still going but just stopped in mid-air. As a finale the tip erupted into red and blue sparks when they faded the girl who had given it to Hermione in the first place was calmly holding it between her thumb and forefinger. Some time during the confusion the redheaded boy who had slipped it to her under the table was on the floor rolling in laughter.   
  
The girl shook her head and kicked him lightly, "Get up, Bixby, you're making a fool of yourself laughing like a hyena."   
  
"Oh come off it! Circe, you think it is as funny as I do," he protested, getting up all the same.  
  
"I most certainly do not," she sniffed with well breed distain, he glared at her.   
  
"All right, all right, I do have to say that it is the best thing your uncles have come up with since 'Screaming Sour Sunday Mix,' but I don't think now is the time for this conversation."   
  
The entire class was glaring daggers at the two pranksters, Hermione was sure she could taste blood in her mouth for all the times she had had to bite her cheek to keep from either laughing or crying; Harry and Ron had been like this.   
  
Circe arched her eyebrow and said, cool as ever, "What are you all staring at? I stopped the thing, not set it off. You should be thanking me."   
  
After class almost all of the students pretended to have forgotten about the rocket and nastily mimicked the Head Sergeant Master in high and whiny voices instead.   
  
"Now remember, if you have to go back to correct someone, there is only a twenty-four hour time loop in which you can do so!" Tiglah Kurt squeaked.  
  
"No, no, no!" Everard Longbottom sneered, "It sounds more like, 'you are not allowed to visit any of the unstable times because they are highly variable and you might accidentally change them!!!" Alphonsa Bulstrode snorted.  
  
"As if! 'Don't change a thing!!! Don't even pick a leaf from a bush!' Geesh! What's up with that?" Cameron Zadah laughed.   
  
"Oh, and the worst possibility of all! 'If you go to the same part of time over and over you will strain the space/time continuum until the second disappears from time and nobody will ever be able to remember it!!!!!"  
  
Everybody laughed with him at his high squeaky voice. Everybody, that is, except the purple-haired girl, Circe. She was pointedly ignoring the apparently "superior" boys and their hangers-on by reading yesterdays issue of the Daily Prophet as she kept pace behind the group. Many parts of it were excruciatingly funny, or at least she thought so. The "Funnies" page, introduced by muggle-born Dean Thomas fifteen years ago, she thought hilarious, especially as she had never known muggles could be so witty as to write and draw such jokes.   
Circe scanned the horoscopes before reading the actual articles. She never really believed them; Lavender Kurt was just like any other prophet and while she might have up to five true visions a year, the rest of the time she made up junk to keep her audience enthralled. She ran her finger down the signs until she stopped at Aquarius, the water bearer. The picture beside the sign was arranged like tarot cards in this order: a sandglass, a tornado, a ghost, a cliff, and picture of a two-headed coin spinning on its side. Interested, Circe's eyes jumped to the caption below the picture, expecting to find some cheery, optimistic fakery as she did anyway. Instead the elegant blue writing washed away like water from glass and the caption was rewritten in strange purple ink:  
  
'Very soon you will be pressed for time by an unexpected and unpredictable event. You will relive dead memories from before your birth and force others to revive them, but the doors will shut and lock behind you, leaving only one way out. The path will be virulent and lethal, and you may need another face to achieve your ends. A Leo will thank you, a Pisces will love you, a Scorpio will hate you, and beware the stony fang.'   
  
Circe stared disbelieving as the normal blue ink and optimistic words forcefully reasserted themselves in the caption, reading as cheerily as they always did. Her eyes narrowed and she glanced down at the star chart at the bottom of the page, skipping the actual chart and reading the interpretation below:  
  
'Aquarius: The Moon is square with Mars and Pluto, and so your temper is short and you trust no one. You must learn to look at the good side and try to stay calm; anxiety will only hurt you. Mercury the trickster and Saturn the ruler are entering your house and so your life will be taken out of your hands. Retrieve it before you follow the same path as your control.'   
  
Circe lifted her head to consider it, but before she could hands wrapped around her eyes.  
  
"Guess who!!!"   
  
"Bixby! Get off of me!" The hands fell away and Circe whirled around to see Bixby towering over her, grinning.   
  
"That was some rocket, huh? Aren't my uncles great?" Circe shoved him square in the chest.   
  
"Those uncles are great. Your uncle Percy has a habit of getting on people's nerves. How did he convince that Ravenclaw basket of brains to marry him?"  
  
"Awww, aren't you going to give any of my family a chance?"  
  
"I've given you a chance!" Bixby backed away, still grinning like an idiot.  
  
"You have a point, mighty Circe-" here he bowed deeply to her "-but it makes no difference. You're coming to my birthday party tomorrow? Remember to dress up; my father insists on it being a fancy dinner party." He stayed long enough to see her smile and then he ran off.   
  
Circe sighed and turned the page of the newspaper, having completely forgotten her unusual horoscope. The front page of the paper was covered with pictures of Harry Potter and the Minister of Magic, Mr. Weasley. The girl recognized both personages instantly, having read many books about Harry, and Bixby and Mr. Weasley shared a few traits common to the Weasley lineage, mainly the red hair and freckles, just like any father-son combination.   
Circe grinned and read on.  
  
"The Minister of Magic Remembers His Childhood Friend, Harry Potter"  
  
Written by: Ginny Creevy   
  
'It will have been exactly 25 years tomorrow since the famous hero who had been able to stand up to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Mr. Weasley, the Minister of Magic and one of Harry's friends, organizes the annual celebration again this year for Harry Potter, the brave student who died before he could graduate and reach up to his fullest maturity. We have asked Mr. Weasley if he will ever let anybody else help him organize the festival so that he will not be exhausted by the addition to his regular workload, but he repeats that he does it in memory of his friend. Again the Weasley twins, Mr. George and Fred Weasley, donate a generous sum from their profitable business as prank-makers.   
  
Directly quoting them, "Harry once gave us 1000 galleons so that we could start our business. We feel that we have to repay him...somehow." You see that although the young Harry Potter has died, he still has a powerful effect on us all, though that effect isn't always positive.   
  
Mr. Draco Malfoy, a foremost member of the Wizard's Council who was in Harry's year at Hogwarts, says, "Harry Potter was never anything special. His mother concocted the counter-curse to the Avada Kedavra curse, not he. When You-Know-Who tried to curse Harry, the sorcerer passed on some of his own talents to Harry, including making him a Parseltongue. You see, the only reason Harry has become famous at all was other people; he has never done one thing all by himself. As I remember, he was infamous for breaking every rule there was! And Professor Dumbledore awarded him for his disobedience! If you ask me, there has been some serious propaganda here, and not all of it has been telling the truth. If you continued to ask me, I'd say Harry was a worthless muggle-lover. That last bit is off the record, right?"   
  
There you are, dear readers, the opinions of the Minister and Primary of the Wizard's Council, two of the most important personages in the Magical Government. But, no matter how much Mr. Malfoy froths at the mouth because of Harry Potter, the celebration will be taking place at Hogwarts from May 20th to May 27th. At the actual scene of Hogwarts, most of the professors are overjoyed at the thought of hosting a celebration for the late student.  
  
Neville Longbottom, the Herbology professor who succeeded Professor Sprout, says, "I went to school with Harry, we actually shared a dorm room. He was nice to me, and his friends were too. I feel that we should have celebrated his name more than just this."  
  
Professor Trelawney, the astrology professor, says, "I remember Harry. He was in my class for a few years. I told him, I predicted his death, but would he listen? No-" and several other teachers remember either teaching young Harry, or going to school with him.  
  
Professor Weasley, who is retired from dragon taming and now the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, says, "I saw Harry once when he participated at the Triwizard Tournament when I supplied the dragons, but that's about it."  
  
Professor Binns, the history professor and a ghost, somehow doesn't remember Harry, but then he would be the only one. He says, "All of the students I taught fell asleep in my class, so why should I bother to remember them? Wait, there was one student…Hermosa Grant, I think…or was it something else? I remember that she wanted to know about the Chamber of Secrets…. Now get out of my way, I need to teach!"   
  
And so Hogwarts will know its hero once again, for an entire week.'  
  
Circe grinned at the way the reporter described her father's reaction to the mention of Harry Potter. She was about to turn the page when Everard approached her.   
  
"Circe, can I have a word?" he asked brushing his brown hair out from his eyes.  
  
"Me? You want a word with little old me? Oh I'm honored," she said with a snide smile.  
He led her over to a more deserted corner of the hall. Everard unlike his father, Neville, was strong and stocky yet incredibly graceful on his feet; he could almost glide across the ground and had stamina from here to next Tuesday. When others were huffing and puffing on the verge of collapse Everard was still going strong. And he wasn't all muscle either; he didn't get everything perfect but he had enough fair marks that Circe was curious as to why he wanted to chat.  
  
"I don't really think you asked me over to ask how my day was going so why don't we cut to the chase?" she asked, eyebrow raised. Everard chuckled.  
  
"You certainly don't like to waste time do you," he paused, "incidentally that is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about, time"  
  
"Uh huh, what about it, need more of it? Me too." He smiled a little at the last part but mostly he just looked nervous.  
  
"Well spit it out, I don't have all day you know," she said harsher then she had intended. His features darkened a little, but as she only rolled her eyes he sighed and went on.  
  
"I am having a little bit of trouble with the-" but mercifully Hermione chose that moment to interrupt.   
  
"Ms. Malfoy, I need to see you," when Circe didn't move she added, "now."   
  
"Sorry, Everard," she muttered and exchanged puzzled looks with Bixby, who was lounging at the other end of the hall. He shrugged and she walked back into the classroom.   
  
Circe stood nervously in front of the Head Sergeant Master's desk. In reality it could have been anyone's desk, but Ms. Granger was sitting behind it and that made all the difference. The woman sitting in the beautifully cushioned crimson chair was thin and angular with plain brown hair tied severely into a coil at the back of her head. She had ordinary ginger eyes, but those eyes were also gazing sharply back at the girl.  
  
Circe uneasily toyed with the end of her bright purple ponytail as the woman scrutinized every inch of the figure in front of her. Those uncompromising brown irises and black pupils examined the girl completely, from the crimson eyes in the thin, heart-shaped face, down the strapless blue shirt, the blue jeans, to the mismatched boots with an old, patched black robe thrown over it all. The girl's birch wand was sticking out of the holster hanging from the belt hooked loosely about her waist. Those bleak, inscrutable eyes then seemed to penetrate past Circe's disdainful expression and examine her soul, or at least it seemed so to the girl. Circe squeaked once, cleared her throat, and finally spoke.   
  
"You wanted to see me, ma'am?" Hermione sat back in the chair, satisfied.   
  
"It's about time. And yes, I wanted to see you. It is about a third of the way through the semester, of which I believe you are well aware. It is my custom to test my students starting about this time, one by one. As you appear to have absorbed the most material out of the entire class, I have chosen you to be first. You will go back in time to a set time and place, observe what you see, return in a set amount of time, and report to me. You will not be able to time-travel at all during this period, and you will automatically be pulled back into this time at the end of the period. The challenge, as you may have guessed, is to observe as much as you can without changing a single thing. You will depart day after tomorrow, and I would suggest bringing food enough for a fortnight and a cloak; you really don't know how long you will be staying. If you are in mortal danger, you may send out a beacon; I'll show you how to do that later. Be in this office 9 in the morning, sharp, and I will accept no excuses. You are dismissed."  
  
Circe, stunned, ambled slowly out of the door and into the deserted hallway. She checked her watch and saw the words "Bixby's party" flash across it; she loved this watch, because even if it didn't tell the time, it did tell you exactly what you had to be doing or getting for. And now she had to go to Diagon Alley to buy a gift for Bixby and a new outfit for herself, which was the benefit of having a rich father and absolutely no scruples about outrageously spending his money.   
  
Circe checked the moneybag she hung at her belt, but it was nearly empty. She stood there for a moment…her house was close to Diagon Alley, and she needed to go there to collect some more gold from her stash, which was just money from the Malfoy vault. And then after her shopping spree it would probably be too late to ride her broom, even though it was a brand new and very fast Flaring Zephyr, all the way back to the Time College, so she would have to stay at the Malfoy household. Oh well, as long as she didn't have to face Lazarus or Cane too much. Without a second thought Circe strode through the halls to her dorm room, mounted her broom, and flew out the window. 


	3. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Three

A/N:  
ALL CHAPTERS SUBJECT TO CHANGE  
Cloe: Gryffith is on a bit of a vacation, so I am left to hold the fort down by myself, oh woe is I. But seriously Gryffith is gone and I've been left here to beta, post, and everything else. Now I'm very sorry to do this but I had enough. I will not (and I won't let Gryffith either) post on ff.net until we get at least 15 reviews, that shouldn't be too hard for you people. Hell Chapter One 109 hits, and only 5 people reviewed. Come on!!! It's a travesty, its a mockery, its a sham! ::sighs:: Well here you go chapter 2.... Sorry it took so long, damn band.  
  
Disclaimer:  
  
Known Characters, Places, and Universe: Don't own it, won't ever own it, don't really want to own it (now that's just a blatant lie)  
  
Unknown Characters, Plot, Anything else you don't recognize: Ours, please don't use it with out our permission, the whole Circe name thing is a huge coincidence pay it no mind, Bixby's name is from the Cat Who... books by Lillian Jackson Braun, and any other seemingly familiar plot lines etc... is purely accidentally.   
  
Thanks all   
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Guardian Angel from Hell  
Chapter Two, Family Ties  
  
A Harry Potter FanFiction  
By Gryffith and Cloe  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Chapter Two  
  
After a delightful welcome home by the house elves Circe decided to go straight to her room and then to Diagon Alley. She sauntered to the kitchen tilting pictures on her way much to the displeasure of the occupants as they fell out or woke up. In any other house this would be rude, but any other house was not Malfoy Manor and the pictures in those houses weren't filled with stuffy old witches and wizards most of whom had something do to with the dark arts in one way or another. Circe chuckled, thinking; I even have something to do with the dark arts, fighting it that is. She grinned remembering the first time the look on her face when she told her father she was going to work for the Time Bureau.   
  
"Hey dad," a younger Circe had yelled.   
  
"Yes, Circe?" Draco Malfoy had asked, looking and sounding exactly like his father. Circe grinned wickedly.  
  
"I just wanted to tell you that I," she had paused for effect and to fix her white blond hair, "I just joined the Time Bureau, you know fighting to put an end to the evil Lord Greythorn. She paused, looking at the wall.   
  
Draco had gone a sickly shade of white, his eyes blazed, and he clamped his mouth shut so as to not start screaming, he knew better than to shout; a screaming match with Circe Malfoy was not something easily won. Finally, he regained some semblance self-control.  
  
"You did what?" he had asked in a soft deadly sounding voice that was meant to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who was listening; he had learned it from Lucius Malfoy, his father. Circe rolled her eyes; she had either ignored his subtle threat or she had completely missed it. He had known the former was the case, for she was smirking the tiniest bit just enough so he would notice and be angered further by her disrespect.  
  
"What didn't you hear me the first time, are you going deaf?" the last word she had screamed her voice warbling at 150 decibels. Draco's eyes narrowed into slits and he looked her right in the eyes, and saw two reminders of her lack of proper respect for the Malfoy family name, one she was wearing muggle contacts, she knew he despised everything muggle and two as if the muggle contacts weren't bad enough, she had gotten them in crimson, the Gryffindor house color. She had stared back at him, eyes wide unblinking; she had this strange habit of opening her eyes very wide and keeping them stationary when she was trying to get what she wanted.  
  
"I won't be going deaf if you stop screaming in my ears," he had said straining not to scream back at her, "you are not working for that Mudblood! Not ever! Now get out of my sight, we will have no more discussions on the subject."   
  
"Whatever you say father, " but before he could yell at her for being pert she was gone.   
  
Some people have selective hearing, Circe has not, what she has is better: she has the ability to take just about any conversation and rationalize it into making it sound like the other people was agreeing with her the entire time, and in times of dire need convince others that this is what was said as well. In other words, she simply changed "You are not working for that Mudblood" into "Work your way up to the top and run the entire Bureau" and "we will have no more discussions on the subject" into "I don't have any objections, so I see no need to speak of it again." She still loved being able to do that.  
  
Circe ran up the four flights of stairs to her room, lifted the third floorboard from the left of her canopy bed, and pulled out a heavy bag of gold. Just as she was putting down the floorboard, she froze; heavy footsteps were clumping up the stairwell. The girl groaned; there was no way she would go back the way she had come. She pulled out her wand and considered apparating, but that was exhausting. Her broom…but that was downstairs, unless she used the summoning charm. She sighed in disgust; her summoning charm was, while everything else was in peak condition, pathetic. Instead she remembered the fireplace at the other end of her room, built up a small blaze, threw in a pinch of floo powder she kept in a pouch at her waist, and as she jumped into the fireplace she muttered, "Diagon Alley."  
  
She appeared in the fireplace of the Leaky Cauldron, the entrance to the alley. With careful and disdainful poise, she stepped through the back wall of the tavern into the busy marketplace of witches and wizards. First, she browsed through several shops for Bixby's birthday gift. One clerk offered his service at Destiny's Paraphernalia and Circe nodded absently as she bent over a reputedly magic mirror.  
  
"I'm looking for a gift for my friend. His birthday is today." The clerk clapped his hands.  
"Ah! A Pisces! Does your friend enjoy jewelry, because we have a nice selection of birthstones-"  
  
Circe straightened up tautly and retorted stiffly, "No, thank you. He is not much into rocks."  
  
After another hour she settled on a book showing the greatest plays in Quidditch since the sport was invented, plus a bag full of Fizzing Whizbees, Chocolate Frogs, and black Pepper Imps, and had them wrapped at the counter, which was an idea some of the shop owners had gotten from the muggles as a way to improve business. Without more ado Circe made a beeline to her favorite tailor and perused through the numerous fabrics in stock but nothing would match her shade of purple hair. Then she remembered that she could change that so she ordered some royal purple silk with delicate and restrained gold embroidery depicting small suns and stars and allowed herself to be measured for a sleeveless dress robe. She then bought several silk sashes in an iridescent color that flashed from tan to canary yellow, otherwise known as ocher, and tossed in a few extra sickles to have her initials embroidered in crimson along the edges when she paid for the outfit, courtesy of her father, of course.   
  
Marching resolutely into the London streets, where the sun had long past set, by way of the Leaky Cauldron, Circe spent a few minutes looking for a suitable drugstore. Once there she easily obtained ruby-colored hair-dye, some purple and ocher hair highlighters, a pair of yellow contacts, and a few light bulbs at various sizes and watts for the older Mr. Weasley, Bixby's grandfather and one of the party's host, to fuss over. At the checkout counter she dug through her moneybag for the tiny wallet she kept for such emergencies and quickly paid the correct sum; muggle studies had been a good choice to take at Hogwarts. She chuckled as she remembered going to that school, even though she had only graduated almost a year ago. Her father had been furious when Lazarus had told him that the hat had put her into Gryffindor.   
  
Satisfied with her purchases, Circe used Floo Powder to get back to her home; there wasn't a fireplace in her dorm room. Once she was in her bedroom, the girl unloaded her bags, grabbed the hair dye, highlights, and a nightshift, and snuck into her mother's bathroom. She spent well over two leisurely hours in there by taking a hot relaxing shower-making sure that no one else in the family could have hot water for the rest of the night- to massage the red dye into her hair and highlighting the hair on either side of her forehead so that in the morning she could have two braids of red, purple, and ocher hanging over her temples. In the process she sampled every one of her mother's scents, soaps, and cosmetics, found black hair dye that Sylvia Malfoy used to keep it a shiny black, and took a lovely blue bottle of perfume that smelled like a delightful mixture of vanilla and lilacs.   
  
Feeling refreshed and hungry, Circe ambled down the stairs to the kitchen, thinking to rummage through the cupboard for food. But she had hardly opened a door when two house elves scampered in and offered her their service. Of course, she had gotten used to serving herself at Ms. Granger's college because the HSM never allowed the elves to pamper the humans, but at home, the elves were ready and willing to work. So she ordered a small pizza and two cans of Dr. Pepper to accompany it. The elves nodded respectfully; they were well used to their mistress's preference for Muggle food. Before they could come back though, Cane entered the room. He stopped short when he saw his little sister already there. Little was correct in all the senses; she two years younger than him-although she had graduated from Hogwarts first-not to mention how she was only 5'3" to his 6'1."   
  
"Surprise!" she snickered.  
  
"Who-Why do you have red hair, Circe? That's what all the Weasels have. Surely you don't think they need another addition to their, um, overly large family?" Cane chuckled at the way he came up with that comeback. Circe sighed pityingly.   
  
"I dyed my hair, dear brother, because I felt like it."  
  
"What are you doing here?" he leered accusingly, his thin black eyebrows narrowing. Her own blonde-white eyebrows raised innocently.   
  
"Me? Isn't this my home?"  
  
"It'd be better for u if it wasn't," he turned the phrase menacingly.  
She thought of sighing forlornly, as she would often do in private, but she could never let her brothers see a weakness. For all that, Cane was thickheaded, somewhat slow for a Malfoy, he was also quick to jump to conclusions, and he didn't stop to ask questions. In a way, he was more dangerous than Draco; he didn't have a reputation to think of. Instead, she shrugged.   
  
"That's your opinion, now isn't it? I mean, I wouldn't expect you to like me…especially when I had the option of moving out before you did, being a wee bit smarter and all." His brown-green eyes flashed.   
  
"I wouldn't say that, if I were you." His voice was shaky, but Circe knew better than to assume that he was about to cry; it was suppressed rage. Luckily for her, the elves chose that moment to come in with her food, distracting Cane. She leapt up from her chair.   
  
"Here's my stuff, I think I'll leave the elves to order around as you see fit."  
  
The elves cringed slightly when they saw Cane, but Circe pretended not to notice; they would only get in trouble. Grabbing the tray, she skipped lightly up the stairs as her brother cracked his knuckles ominously behind her. Safe inside her room, the girl allowed a tear to roll down her cheek as she realized that she was alone in the world…because even if she had denied it she knew that Cane was right, she wasn't welcome in this house. She neatly finished the pizza and the sodas, belched lavishly, and crawled into bed.  
  
The next morning she slept late and when she finally groaned to consciousness she checked the muggle clock she kept beside her bed: 1:00; she still had three hours before she had to leave for Bixby's party. First she used the bell pull beside her bed, calling an elf to her, and ordered a light breakfast and the morning paper to be brought up to her room. She took her time about eating it, letting herself enjoy the comic strips. Then she just happened to glance at the clock and realized that she had wasted two out of her three hours. In a frenzy she stripped off her nightshirt and began putting on the robe when she stopped, took it off, put on a strapless high top, her belt with its holster, and some biker shorts, rushed to her mother's bathroom-Sylvia spent all of her time fawning over Draco or over at her friend Millicent Bulstrode's house-and washed her face and combed her hair and brushed her teeth very quickly.   
  
She sprinted back to her room, shrugged on the robe, rushed into her mother's room where Sylvia had a vanity table, and plopped down. With intense concentration and her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth, Circe carefully braided the plaits so they weren't crooked and then she used one of the sashes to wrap around her head like a casual handkerchief. She tapped it this way and that until it was just right and then put a spell on it so that it wouldn't move until she took the spell off. She took her belt off, wrapped and tied the other sash around her waist over the robe, and then put the belt back over it with some of the sash showing above and below the belt. With that done, some of the more sparkly bottles on the table caught her eye and so she examined each one in turn. Some were interesting, but Circe considered most of them a waste of her time so she turned her attention to the jewelry door Sylvia had accidentally left open.   
  
Delighted, the girl found two topaz earrings and a black velvet choker with a topaz drop the size of her thumbnail hanging from it which she fixed onto her earlobes and around her neck. There really was no need for makeup; her eyes made yellow by the contacts were stunning enough. Once that chore was completed she sprinted back to her room, unluckily enough her mother's room was on the second floor and her own was on the fourth, and donned two amethyst toe rings, a gold chain ankle bracelet, and her black suede high heels. She checked the bedside clock again: 3:55. She grinned and looked herself over in her full-length mirror in her room, smiling wickedly at what she saw.  
One second later she was clattering down the stairs to the ground floor, clutching the gift, racing to get to her broom leaning against the wall near the front door. On the way she bumped into her father, smirked insolently at his startled and horrified expression.  
  
"See ya later, Pops! I'm going to Bixby's birthday party and I needed to get a new robe so that I could dress up enough!" Leaving her father to stutter furiously, she raced on, sweeping up the broom as she ran out the door and in a matter of moments was up in the air, the wind whipping her braids about madly.  
  
There was a crowd of people standing in front of the Weasley house when she arrived, most of which sported red hair. She landed gracefully and left her broom with the others that were already there and then tossed her gift onto the growing pile of presents. Mrs. Weasley, Bixby's grandmother, was standing in front of the door, greeting the guests as they came, but nobody seemed to be paying a lot of attention to her. Circe recognized most of the people in yard, seeing Percy Weasley with his wife Penelope chasing after his two girls, Roslyn and Peony, who were running amuck and pitching blue hair ribbons at the guests as they went. The other politicians, Bixby's parents, were standing in a corner, admiring their work. Mrs. Farhana Weasley, who originally was an intern from Bangladesh, didn't usually do such decorations, but the ones put up were extraordinary.   
  
There were the three bachelors in the family, Charlie the dragon-tamer was chatting with Neville Longbottom while Fred and George were lounging by the snack table trying to entice passing guests to try their new pranks. Bixby's oldest uncle, Bill, was standing with his wife Fleur under a tree and their younger daughters were sitting together on a bench. Their son, the oldest, was talking with Narcissi Kurt-how did she get here? Circe felt a hand on her elbow, Mr. Weasley, the grandfather, whispered in her ear.  
  
"Kenneth is part vela; all the girls go for him."  
  
She turned and grinned at him and watched his face crinkle up into a matching grin. Then she felt her purse at her side and took out the light bulbs.  
  
"I heard you were interested in things that have to do with muggles. I thought you might find these interesting."  
  
"Oh, are you interested in muggles also?" he asked eagerly.  
  
"I took advanced Muggle Studies in school. I found it very amusing, but I'm afraid the only real reason I took the course was to annoy my dad." Mr. Weasley's eyes clouded over for a moment.   
  
"I'm sorry, but I can't place your father…or you for that matter." Circe smirked.   
  
"It figures; I dyed my hair red to annoy him too. His name is Draco Malfoy, I assume you've met him, and my name is Circe Malfoy."  
  
"Oh!" the older man jumped back slightly, "Oh! But…the Malfoys-" Circe grinned wickedly as she was about to reply, but Bixby stopped her first.   
  
"Sorry, Gramps, but I'm gonna steal Circe for a moment." He drew her away.   
  
"Hey, I've been looking all over for purple hair! What happened?" Circe grinned.   
  
"I figured it'd be fun. I'm going over to your uncles to see if they think they had a niece they had forgotten about."  
  
Bixby shook his head, "Nah, they know you too well. Must I remind you that they've met you before? Oh! You have yellow eyes now. I assume you got new contacts?"  
  
"What else? Do you like my outfit?"  
  
"Stunning…where'd you get it?" Circe examined her purple nails-she had painted them a while ago and they still matched her outfit.  
  
"I spent some more of my dad's money. That's all. You enjoying your party?" He pinched some of his dress robes material between his thumb and forefinger and grimaced.  
  
"This fancy stuff was dad's idea, not mine. Oh shoot! Uncle Percy's gesturing at me, I've gotta go."  
  
She watched him run off and then she felt two young bodies hurl into her legs. The redhead must be Roslyn and the younger, a brunette like her mother, must be Peony. While Circe fought for her balance the girls each grabbed one of her hands and started trying to pull her apart. Their mother, a tall, plump woman appeared out of nowhere and hoisted Peony onto her waist and balanced her there then bent over and held Roslyn around the middle. She looked up apologetically.  
  
"Sorry about that. I don't believe I've seen you before. I'm Penelope Weasley." Circe looked down her nose at Roslyn.  
  
"Um, yeah…. My name is Circe Malfoy." The woman's eyes widened in panic.   
  
"You're a Malfoy? Is…is your father here?!" The girl rolled her eyes.  
  
"No. He's too much of a busybody to go to someone's birthday party. Bix invited me."  
  
Circe watched Penelope tow away her daughters and then tried to see where Percy had taken her friend. Instead, she saw Ginny Creevy, the reporter, followed by two other men, indistinguishable except one of them was carrying a camera. The girl's first reaction was: what's a reporter doing here? But then Circe saw the woman's short red hair and identified her as Bixby's Aunt Ginny and the two men following her as Dennis, her husband, and Colin, the one with the camera, Creevy. She remembered the article in the paper and went over to talk to the reporter. Once she was in range, she held out her hand.   
  
"Hello, Mrs. Creevy!" All three of them looked up at her and Colin started taking pictures. Ginny looked surprised for a bit then recovered her composure.   
  
"Oh, hi! I'm sorry, but I can't place you at all!"  
  
"That's all right. My father doesn't talk about me much."  
  
"Oh? Who's your father?" Ginny got out a pad of paper and a pen.  
  
"His name is Draco Malfoy and I am his only daughter, Circe."  
  
"Oh!"   
  
Dennis looked uneasily at the girl and Colin just looked confused. Ginny shared her brother-in-law's expression, "I thought he had only two sons?"  
  
Circe rolled her eyes, "He would. I was in Gryffindor and he thinks that shames the family. My mother doesn't really see the difference between the Gryffindor house and Slytherin, but then she went to Durmstrang."  
  
"Oh, then I guess that's all right. Does he know that you're at Bixby's birthday party? I mean, we all know that Ron and Draco are political rivals, but they pretty much hated each other in school too."  
  
"Oh, he knows!" Circe laughed, "I bumped into him on my way out and I told him then. He hadn't seen me since I graduated from Hogwarts, but think that bump was a little too much for him."  
  
Colin looked concerned now; "He hasn't seen you since you graduated? Not even for Christmas holidays?"  
  
Circe merely laughed, but Ginny thought that the girl's eyes looked a little glassy for a moment. The girl also realized it but she kept her eyes from filling up with water from years of stern practice, "Oh, I guess you could say my family is a little like the Dursleys that Harry Potter had to stay with. I've read all about them. Did you ever meet them?" Ginny nodded.   
  
"We all saw them when Harry's Uncle Vernon came to pick him up from the station at the end of every year. Mum kept trying to get Harry stay the summer with us but that man seemed to think that anywhere that Harry might have fun was evil."  
  
"Same with my dad. I read your article in the paper yesterday about the tribute you brothers are organizing and funding. Only I didn't really realize that you were related at the time. I loved quote you took from my dad."  
  
Ginny grinned as mischievous grin as Circe could ever come up with; "I have my own grudges against your father, thank you very much."   
  
Ginny moved along then over to greet her mother and the two men followed her. Circe's eyes roamed around the yard, and then fell on Parvati Patil and Lavender Kurt talking. Well, that at least would explain Narcissi. Circe then remembered her horoscope and went over to the pair.  
  
"Hi, Ms. Patil. Hi, Mrs. Kurt."  
  
Parvati looked at the girl who approached them with elevator eyes, taking in Circe's entire appearance, "Um, hello. Do I know you?"  
  
"I don't think so. Bix invited me. My name is Circe. I go to the Time College with him. Mrs. Kurt, I wanted to talk to you about your horoscopes." Lavender looked both pleased and flustered to be recognized for her work.   
  
"Oh, yes? What do you want to know?" The girl glanced at her feet for a moment, then met the older woman's eyes.   
  
"You wrote a horoscope yesterday that was rather odd. The caption changed as soon as I looked at it from what it had said originally and after I had read it, it changed back. Do you know what it mea-"  
  
But the two women walked away without a second glance as though Circe didn't exist. She thought it was rude, to say the least. Again, the girl wandered around the garden looking for Percy and Bixby. At last, she saw that Percy had her friend cornered under a weeping willow and he looked anxious to get away if you asked her. The pompous politician probably wouldn't listen to a little old girl, so Circe strode over to the snack table straight into the hands of Fred and George.   
  
"Hey, do you want to try one of these tarts? We made them ourselves," Fred held a plate of little cookies under her nose. Circe shook her head.   
  
"No, actually, I wanted to ask a favour."  
  
George raised an eyebrow, "Oh? And who are you?"  
  
"My name is Circe Malfoy. And I-" Fred clapped his hand onto her shoulder and chuckled; though, he seemed not to notice how the girl seemed to shrink away from his touch and shrug off his hand.  
  
"Circe? But the last time we saw you, you had purple hair and red eyes! Oh, and thanks to you we've become interested in magic dyes. Here's a complimentary set of the dyes and shampoos we've invented as thanks for giving us the inspiration. So, what's the favor?" The girl politely examined the plain brown bottle as she brushed her shoulder off where Fred had touched her and then smiled at the twins.  
  
"Well, your brother Percy has had Bix trapped under that tree over there for over an hour. I don't think Percy would listen to a young girl like me, but if you two…" she winked at them. Fred winked at his brother.   
  
"You're right, this is the girl that Bix wrote to us about. Say no more, Circe; our nephew will suffer no more. George, let's give Weatherby a run for his money!"  
  
Circe trailed the twins and watched them grab the politician's arms and lead him over to the snack bar where they promptly proceeded to stuff him with various trick tarts and candies and chocolates. Then she went into the willow.  
  
Bixby saw her coming, "Thanks! Am I correct in believing that you're the one who alerted Uncle George and Uncle Fred?" Circe started rubbing her arms, was it suddenly chillier under this tree, or was it just her? She forced herself to stop and smile at him.  
  
"Yeah, I saw Percy blathering on as I always hear he-"  
  
But Bixby had also seen how she rubbed her arms and looked concerned, "Are you cold? Oh, you're wearing a sleeveless robe! It's March, not May, you know. Do you want to go inside?"  
  
The girl flung her chin up, but the boy probably would think nothing of it as he was about a foot taller than she was anyway. Circe arched her brow at him derisively, instead.   
  
"It's not cold in the slightest!" she declared, lying through her teeth.  
  
The boy ignored her declaration and threw his arm around her shoulders companionably, though she winced and shrunk inside herself even more than she had when Fred had touched her. Bixby didn't notice this either and led her to the house.  
  
"Oh, you're cold, I can tell. Let's find a jacket or somethin' for you to wear. Don't you try to draw away! You're shivering and I can feel it."  
  
Circe nodded in agreement, but stared at the ground so he couldn't see her face in case there was a tic going in her jaw or something. Why did he have to insist on holding her like this? It wasn't that she didn't like him, but the only other people who had ever touched her like this had been her brothers using her as a punching bag or as an object on which to take out their anger. Even Draco, who had to look pleasant for the sake of the public eye, did not skimp at slapping or hitting her to make a lesson, particularly in his idea of etiquette, stick. For some reason, Bixby didn't notice how tense and uptight she was, or he seemed to think it was the cold, but Mrs. Weasley, who they had to pass to get inside, did notice.   
  
But what she saw first was her grandson holding a girl close to him, and so she squealed, "Ooooh, I'm going to have great-grandchildren!"  
  
Both college students blushed until their faces and their hair clashed, but Bixby make a joke of it by whispering that his grandmother was going senile. And with that, he left Circe sitting at the kitchen table so he could find a suitable wrap, but Mrs. Weasley wasted no time in coming in and sitting next to the girl.   
  
The older woman's eyes looked her up and down, just as Parvati's had done, and said, "I don't believe we've met."  
  
"We haven't," the girl retorted shortly, suddenly very petulant.  
  
"Come, come, tell me who your grandparents are; I bet you I've met them."  
  
"I don't bloody think so. My maternal grandparents live in Russia and my paternal grandfather hated your guts," she snapped. Mrs. Weasley sniffed haughtily and left, leaving Circe in peace. Bixby chose that moment to come back in with a black and white striped wool shawl and held it up with a rueful grin.  
  
"This was all I could find." She stood up and forced a smile.   
  
"It doesn't matter. Let's go back outside."  
  
Circe turned and walked out of the door leaving her friend to hurry after her, still carrying the shawl. But she stopped short a few feet from the stoop and stared at the sky, causing Bixby to bump into her. He looked up as well and gripped her shoulders tightly under the pretense of putting on the shawl; Cameron and Alphonsa were dropping down uninvited into the party on broomsticks. None of the adults or any of Bixby's relatives had noticed incoming brooms, Narcissi and Everard-she must have missed him earlier-did and started to make their way over to the duo in front of the house.   
  
Circe winced both from the fact of the touch and from the pain as her friend's fingers dug into her flesh. At least she knew why he was apprehensive: he and Cameron had been best friends at Hogwarts but they had fought in their fourth year over her, mostly because Bixby hung out with her and Cameron didn't like it. The situation had been temporarily remedied when Cameron had been switched to Durmstrang, but it hadn't helped. Now Cameron landed his broom and left it with the others dumped his present just as Circe had done, and strolled over to greet the birthday boy.  
  
"So, you're still hanging out with the freak?" he asked conversationally. Circe almost yelped as Bixby squeezed her shoulders tighter, but she knew it wouldn't help him.   
  
"She's not a freak!" she heard her friend counter through clenched teeth.   
  
Just then Parvati and Mrs. Weasley rang the dinner gong and everyone watched as the snack bar disappeared and three huge tables with silver settings popped into existence in the air and then drifted to the ground. Straight away all the guests and kids of 25 years and under fought for seats at the first two tables while the grown-ups filled out the third table without fuss. Cameron turned to get a seat, but before he had completely joined the throng fighting for seats, he called over his shoulder.  
  
"Any Malfoy who was in the Gryffindor house can't be anything but a freak!"  
  
Bixby let go of her shoulders, but before Circe could feel relieved he had grabbed her arm and started yanking her into the crowd. By the time the two of them had found a seat together she was sure that she would find bruises as bad as any her brothers had ever given her. But miraculously they had found seats together and Circe felt that was worth the agony, even though she had Roslyn seated on her other side. As much as, Circe felt she ought to enjoy the meal, which the two Mrs. Weasleys most certainly had personally slaved over, the various foods were sawdust in her mouth and nothing more.   
  
Before the dinner was over, she and Roslyn, who had excellent manners at the table, if nowhere else, had had a silent battle of who was the more disdainful and pompous, and Circe had given up trying to talk to Bixby over the noise. The rest of the party was relatively nondescript; Bixby blew out nineteen candles on three different cakes-one for each table-and opened all the presents in the course of two hours. During that time lights like Chinese lanterns had been lit all over the yard to fight off the encroaching blackness, and everybody nodded appreciatively as each of the gifts was unwrapped, though Circe didn't enjoy it very much as Alphonsa and Cameron kept taking turns poking her and making fun of her shawl. At last, it was time to leave and she and Bixby stood together for the first time since the dinner.   
  
"So I'll see you tomorrow?" Bixby asked sociably. Circe shook her head.   
  
"No, the Head Sergeant Master wants me to do this test. I'm not sure how long it will last."  
  
"All day? That's a long test."  
  
"No, it could last a week, she said. It's not in this time. Listen, I've got to go to bed; I have to be in her office at nine, tomorrow morning. Bye!"  
  
And with that Circe took up her broom and rode home. She vaguely remembered getting ready for bed, but for the most part, she just fell into bed. The next morning, after she took a shower and washed the temporary red out of her hair, leaving the permanent purple. She ordered the house elves to make her some good bread that wouldn't spoil and she found a nice warm cloak to wear over a robe, which in turn was thrown over a muggle sweater and a muggle ankle-length skirt; who knew what time she'd be thrown into, especially if it was before the twentieth century. She threw in all sorts of cosmetic disguises, which she could put on in a hurry, double-checked that she had everything, and rode her broom to the college. Ms. Granger met her at the door and led her inside. 


	4. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Four

A/N:   
All chapters subject to change  
Gryffith: Okay, finally out. Why did you make us wait for the 15th review?   
Cloe: Because I'm a stubborn ass, and I wanted 15 reviews. At least and we only just got that many, humph   
Gryffith: Whatever, we got them. It's odd. We got like 140 hits for the Prologue and Ch 1, but only about 60 for Ch 2   
Gryffith: I think you scared them off   
Cloe: Humph   
Gryffith: Hmph to you too. Anyway, we got them, and we're posting Chapter 3   
Cloe: ::gives the readers a dark look:: You should be happy its out too, I was this close ::holds forefinger and thumb an inch apart:: from scraping the whole thing   
Gryffith: You mean that I'd have written up to chapter 12 for nothing?   
Gryffith: Oh well, some of those scenes were worth it! Just imagining them was fun.   
Cloe: So here it is, tada and all the rot. Hope you enjoy it.   
Gryffith: They'd better. I've revised that damn chapter so many times....   
Cloe: ::grumble:: Oh yeah read 15 years and Back Again, its really good   
Cloe: Yeah thats about it huh?   
Gryffith: Yeah, I know about 15 Years and Back. I'm beta-reading it.   
Cloe: I was telling *them* to read it, not *you*, you nitwit   
Gryffith: And as for the reviewers, please review. Even if you just say, "I loved this chapter, write more" even if you don't mean it.   
Gryffith: We like having big egos.   
Gryffith: ::sticks tongue out at Cloe::   
Cloe: ::grumble:: Don't you have somewhere to be?   
Gryffith: ::mock grumble:: Don't you have something to post?   
Cloe: If you'd stop answering me, I could post it.   
Gryffith: Then why didn't you tell me not to answer you? Who else is going to? I mean, I'm the only other one here!   
Cloe: Always have to get the last word, blah blah blah. Are you quite though?  
Gryffith: Yes, because I have to leave in..oh...30 seconds.   
Cloe: Good. Carry on and read, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone just skipped this anyway. Ah whatever.....   
  
Disclaimer: Not ours, hers ::points at the Great JK Rowling::   
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Guardian Angel from Hell   
Chapter Three, A Screw up and the Begining   
  
A Harry Potter FanFiction  
By Gryffith and Cloe   
******************************  
Chapter Three   
  
Ron, Harry, and Hermione walked down the halls of Hogwarts on their way to the Gryffindor Common room. They had just come from a nasty Potions class again with the Slytherins and Harry had, again, been double-teamed by Draco Malfoy and Professor Snape.  
  
"Really, Harry!" Hermione said, "You should be able to cope with them by now! You know they're never going to leave you alone."  
  
Harry sighed, "Yeah, but Snape took off fifty points from Gryffindor. Why can't we just have potions with Hufflepuff or something?"  
  
"I know!" Ron exclaimed, "I mean, it's as if Snape was out to get us!"  
  
Hermione sniffed, "You would have to face the Slytherins sometime anyway, and the same with Professor Snape. And all of the teachers are cracking down on us for N.E.W.T.S and so we're prepared for You-Know-Who."  
  
"Hermione," the redhead groaned, "You think that anything that has to do with the teachers and school and books is perfect."  
  
Before Hermione could come up with a cunning retort, there was a loud bang followed by a thud as a girl landed on the stone floor in front of them clutching a broom. Ron gaped at the young woman's vivid purple hair and yellow eyes, Hermione stepped back involuntarily, and Harry ran forward to help her up. The girl's eyes closed in on Harry's helpful fingers and in response she quickly crawled back against the wall. Feeling the stone behind her blindly, the girl shifted her weight to her hands on the wall and stood. Her eyes inspected the trio, the pupils elevating up and down but mainly up considering that Hermione, the shortest of the three, was easily 4 inches taller than the girl. Hermione stepped back and bumped into Ron,   
  
"Who-what are you?" Circe stared back at the three of them, confused. Her eyes grazed over Ron and Hermione, then rested on Harry.  
  
"Great, just great," she dusted herself off briskly and arched a cavalier brow at Harry, "So I assume you are the famous Harry Potter then? Disappointing really; I expected you to be taller."  
  
Hermione pulled her wand out and stepped forward, "Yes he's Harry Potter, and what business is it of yours? Who are you!?" Circe contemplated Hermione for a moment.   
  
"Ms. Granger, aren't you? Strange, I never expected you to look like this," she appraised loftily. The girl tightened her grip on her wand an pointed it steadily at Circe's chest.   
  
"Then what in the hell did you expect me to look like? And how did you know my name!"  
  
"I know everything about you. At the present moment I know more about you than you could ever guess at. Now tell me what the date is."   
  
Ron's mouth popped open before he could think,"It's the fifth of October. But how do you know about Harry and Hermione?" The young woman blinked, momentarily unbalanced.  
  
"That close? Bit it's impossible to get this close…"  
  
"What do you mean by *close *, who the hell are you, and why are you here?" Harry interrupted rudely.  
  
She hesitated then replied, "Circe. My name is Circe." Harry started to say something, but Ron looked intrigued.   
  
"You knew Hermione and Harry, do you know me?" Hermione now tried to say something, but Circe merely snorted contemptuously.  
  
"You're the easiest of all, Ronald Weasley. Family resemblance can be truly remarkable can't it?" Circe remarked with unexpected, but quickly dismissed, tenderness, although she was only thinking of Bixby. Ron and Bix at this age were, aside from the braided ponytail and the earring, mirror images right down to the shades of brown in their gold-flecked eyes. Ron's face darkened at the second sentence, quenching the triumph he had felt at being recognized so easily.  
  
"Who do you know? Bill? Percy?"  
  
"Hardly. I wasn't thinking of any of your brothers. Especially not that windbag Percy." Circe snickered. Ron beamed, earning disgusted glances from his friends. Harry glared down the 6-inch difference to Circe's upturned face.   
  
"You didn't answer my question. Who exactly are you, why are you here, and where are you from?"  
  
"Did you apparate?" Ron added.  
  
Hermione clucked her tongue, "How many times do I have to tell you, nobody can apparate in or out of Hogwarts."  
  
The young woman raked the hallway with her eyes and jutted her right hip out with her arms folded across her chest. She examined the three students before her arrogantly, but in the next instant she grinned cheekily.  
  
"I wondered if she was always like that. And as to why I didn't answer your question, I did. I answered one question and my name is Circe."  
  
"Why are you here?" Harry repeated.  
  
"That's for me to know and for you to find out…if you can."  
  
"Where are you from?"  
  
Circe grinned wolfishly, "I'm from right here. This school, this country."  
  
"What do you mean?" Hermione demanded. The boys just gawked. Circe raised her eyes to the ceiling as if asking patience for god-she loved doing that. It made people so annoyed.  
  
Then she considered each of them arrogantly, "Since it doesn't look like you'll be figuring this out anytime soon…"  
  
"You're from the future, aren't you?" Hermione turned to Ron in dismay.   
  
"But magic to go to the future hasn't been invented yet!"  
  
The young woman yawned rudely, "20 points to Ron, he guessed right and 50 points from Hermione for such rotten logic. Your right, that kind of magic hasn't been invented at this time. But did I ever say I was from this time? I graduated in the year 2022."  
  
"2022?"  
  
"But you don't even look old enough to have graduated!"  
  
"That's cause I'm smarter than you idiots." Hermione crossed her arms and sniffed huffily. Circe smirked and, putting hands on hips, posed insolently for the other girl.  
  
"We don't like the thought that we're not the queen of smarts, now do we? What, you hoped that you invented the time magic? Well, tell ya what, you do. Anyway, can we go into a classroom that's not being used? I don't want to be caught be Old Mrs. Norris."  
  
The boys nodded and Harry led the way into one of the many spare rooms. Circe followed them inside but as she crossed the threshold her broom banged on the stone frame, yet it didn't break or chip as Harry half expected it to.  
  
"Okay then," the young woman went in further, transfigured a desk into a sofa, and plopped down into it.  
  
"Harry, I don't want to be seen by anybody else, so can I borrow your invisibility cloak?"  
  
Hermione's jaw dropped, "How did you know about that?"  
  
"Ha! As if I didn't! Not many people do, though, so don't worry." Harry eyed her carefully, not very reassured by her audacious wink, and weighted the decision.   
  
"Yeah, you can borrow it if I can see your broom. You let it bang on the stone as if it were a toy!"  
  
She smirked, "It's a new model, even for my time. I charmed it to be indestructible because of my brothers, but I bought it because it's very light and maneuverable. It's not as fast as the latest, but those brooms are heavy and meant for serious traveling. The seekers of the various Quidditch teams favor this line, though. So, here it is. Can I borrow the cloak?" Harry nodded dumbly as he and Ron carefully and reverently examined her Flaring Zephyr.   
  
Hermione let them worship the broom in silence for a while, but then she turned to Circe, "I know that you're here and everything, but why?"  
  
"Well, technically it's a college exam. But this is an unstable time era, being a war and all, and I know for a fact that I should probably be somewhere in the sixteenth century or something. But…I should contact the HSM-"  
  
"The who?"  
  
"The HSM, the Head Sergeant Master. I should contact her and let her know that things are wacky, even if I'm not in mortal danger," Circe rolled her eyes.   
  
As Hermione watched with fascination, the young woman dug in her purse and took out a metal box, covered completely with stamps, stickers, and lipstick, the size and shape of a muggle notebook and flipped the lid up to reveal a black screen in the lid and a touch pad of several buttons on the main part of the box. She balanced the box on her knee, drew her wand from its sheath, and touched the lid with its tip, causing the box to buzz and beep and the screen to crackle. The young woman waited a few moments, letting the device warm up, then jabbed a big red circle in upper right-hand corner of the touch pad. She stared at the screen expectantly, but all that happened was the black surface emitted a hissing noise…nothing.  
  
Hermione cleared her throat. "You know, electronics have a habit of breaking or not working near or around Hogwarts." The young woman nodded reluctantly.  
  
"I suppose the HSM will just have to wait. It's really a pity, because when I finally contact her, the same number of days will have passed…. One of her students arranged a policy so that people won't be so disoriented after they jump through the black hole. When is the next excursion to Hogsmeade, do you know?"  
  
Ron glanced up from her broom and gazed at her with that odd, dreamy smile, "It's this weekend."  
  
"Oh? And what's today?"  
  
Hermione glared daggers at the redhead until he self-consciously returned his attention to the broom, "Today's Monday, Circe. So you'll have to wait a few days before you can check on your teacher." Circe shrugged.  
  
"Fine with me, I guess. As I said, this will give me a chance to play some serious pranks. Harry, can I see your schedule? I wanna see who'll be getting' played."  
  
Hermione sighed in disgust when her friend didn't even appear to have heard the newcomer and handed over her own schedule.  
  
"We have the same schedules except for there. I have Arithmacy Thursday morning and they have Astrology on Thursday night. Otherwise it's the free day for the Gryffindor seventh years."  
  
The young woman looked it over and grinned, "This is gonna be easy! I can't believe that some of the teachers I had were teaching this long ago! I mean Trelawney, oh, this is gonna be so much fun!"  
  
"Circe, where are you going to sleep?" Ron glanced up again, faintly troubled.  
  
"Oh, in that one cabin by the woods, of course!"  
  
Hermione shook her head, "You can't. Hagrid lives there. He's the Care of Magical Creatures professor."  
  
"The half-giant? Damn. Any of you guys know a place where I can hang out?"  
  
"There's Moaning Myrtle's bathroom-"  
  
"Ron, there is no way in hell that I am going to sleep in a bathroom, much less one where a blubbering ghost is sniffling in just the other stall."  
  
"There's Dobby," Harry suggested. "He's one of the house elves here, but he's the only one who's paid. I'm sure they'd be willing to oblige…"  
  
Circe's face clouded, "Dobby…I'm not so sure-"   
  
"Why not?" Hermione demanded hands on hips.  
  
"Oh, all right. I'd better go down there now…but Harry, can I have your cloak now?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, sure. I'll go get it," and he dashed off down the hall. Hermione stared at the doorway through which he had disappeared.   
  
"I wonder if he's going to write to Si-"  
  
Circe's head swung sharply towards the girl, "Harry might write to Sirius Black? Oh…he really shouldn't do that."  
  
"You know about Sirius-oh yeah, you're from the future. But why shouldn't he do that?" the girl puzzled.  
  
"Oh, the less people who know about me the better."  
  
"Oh?" the suspicious Hermione asked. Circe rolled her eyes.  
  
"So there isn't a flux in the space/time continuum. Plus it really disorients people."  
  
"Then why are you letting the house elves see you? I know that they aren't disoriented by much, but they could tell other people-"  
  
Circe raised her eyebrow; "House-elves and gossips aren't the same thing. In fact, they are the exact opposite. I believe if you tell them not to say something, they will be under the imperious charm before they talk about it. Even then…. And besides, I believe a few of those elves will be loyal to me."  
  
The girl started to ask why when Harry whirled in and tossed the young woman the cloak. She caught it reverently then put it on, "Can you see me?"  
  
"No," Ron and Hermione chorused; Harry had eyes for nothing but the broom.   
  
Harry did manage to glance at her when he held up a box, "This is a broomstick care kit; Hermione gave it to me for Christmas a few years ago. Do you mind if Ron and I try out your broom at the Quidditch field? We'll polish it all up afterwards, we promise!" She shrugged.   
"Do whatever you want as long as nobody catches you on that new broom. It's a lot faster than anything you have and I don't want any questions asked about it."  
  
"How can it be faster than a Firebolt?" Ron wondered cynically.  
  
"By its makers having twenty-five years to modify it! What do you think they do all the time, twiddle their thumbs?" she snapped.  
  
"Whatever…let's go down to the kitchens," Harry punched Ron before he could reply and walked out the door. The trio marched briskly down to the kitchens with their invisible shadow following them. As usual Dobby greeted Harry with his customary enthusiasm while the rest of the elves suspiciously edged away from Hermione.   
  
Ron saw this and shouted, "Don't worry, Hermione isn't going to try to liberate you anymore!" Immediately the elves rushed about their business, apparently carefree and very friendly again.   
  
Harry nodded his thanks to Ron-Hermione just looked on sulkily-and looked down at the elf staring raptly at him, "Dobby, I have a favor to ask you."  
  
"Oh, so that's why's you sirs and miss is here!" Circe took this opportunity to shed the cloak, causing the green-eyed elf to gawk at her in amazement…and fear. The trio noticed Dobby's hanging jaw right away, though the boys didn't seem to see the tremors that had begun to shake through the elf's tiny frame.   
  
At last, Harry cleared his throat, "Ahem. Yeah, Dobby, you've seen me come out of the invisibility cloak before. And Circe here is what the favor's about. I, ahem, need you to give her a place to sleep until the weekend, at least."  
  
The big green eyes-like tennis balls really-turned from Harry to Circe, who mouthed, "shhh!" with a finger to her lips, and back again.  
  
"I is…" Dobby's voice faltered. Circe, panicked, opened her purse and dug through it. There were the bottles of dye that Bixby's uncles had given her, some weird-smelling mushrooms that she had pinched off a South American friend her grandfather's, then a big ball of gold ribbon-when had she gotten that? -and there! Circe took her arm out of the bottomless purse clutching one of her ocher sashes, Hermione's eagle eyes seeing the glinting silver initials, and strode forward to kneel by the house elf. She held up the long scarf and let Dobby examine it at his leisure.   
  
As he did so, she muttered under her breath, "I'll explain later."   
  
When he nodded in response she took the sash and wrapped it around his head like a turban, letting his big pointed ears peek through. Circe avoided Dobby's confused eyes and stood up facing Harry.  
  
"I believe we'll get along fine. And I thought you wanted to check out my broom at the Quidditch field?"  
  
The boys needed no further excuse, but Hermione hung back a little, "Why are you so keen to get rid of us?"  
  
"Because I like privacy! You gotta problem with that?"  
to Dobby, "Well, do you like the turban?"  
  
"But miss is a Malfoy!" Circe choked back a scoff, realizing that this was twenty-five years ago.   
  
"I try not to remember that. I'm Draco's kid, but I'm nothin' like him or grandfather. Just, I know how much everyone here "trusts" the Malfoy family around here-about as far as they can throw them-and I don't want them to assume that I am just as evil as they all are."  
  
Dobby hung his head; "Dobby will obey the miss."  
  
"Do you like the sash?" Circe prodded him.  
  
He smiled back and led her to see all the little beds that the elves slept in. Then he helped her push two unused beds together end to end and from there Circe transfigured them into one long couch. She pulled out a plain nightshift and crawled in the narrow bed, waiting for sleep. She sighed, wondering what had gone wrong to send her this close to Harry's death. Dr. Granger wouldn't be very happy to learn that she had already altered things in the past. Then there was Bixby. And Ron. She wasn't dating Bixby, and that was a pity to some extent. She wondered if Ron was free or already taken. Shrugging irritably at the turn of her thoughts, Circe closed her eyes and the surface of her eyelids wobbled as she began to dream. 


	5. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Five

A/N  
Cloe: Oh jeez its almost 1 and I'm still doing this. Ugh. I should be packing. ::does a happy dance:: I'm going to London tomorrow! Anyway here it is Chapter Four so sorry its late, my life decided it was going to wake up and do something so here we are. Ugh so um yeah. Read and Review people. Thanks.   
  
Disclaimer: Tis JK Rowlings idea and I'm not her. If I was, do you think I'd be posting this here?   
********************  
  
Guardian Angel from Hell   
A Harry Potter Fanfiction   
By Gryffith and Cloe  
  
********************  
  
  
Chapter Four: Pranks, Quidditch, and Blame all around.  
  
The next morning in the Great Hall after breakfast had been dished out, Dean walked over to where Harry and his friends were sitting. He looked worried and kept wringing his hands.  
  
"Do any of you guys know where Julian Bendvenuto is? He left for the prefect's bathroom before breakfast but he hasn't come for breakfast yet. And we have a match against Slytherin this afternoon!"  
  
Harry shook his head, "I don't know where he is, but I'm sure he's fine. Geez, Dean, you've been really uptight ever since you promoted to captain of the team."  
  
"Well, I can understand why Wood was so uptight!" he retorted, referring to Oliver Wood, their former goalkeeper who had graduated two years ago. "It's a big responsibility. But then he didn't have to deal with a newbie for a Keeper either."  
  
"But I thought Rona Jyresh was coming along fine?" Ron asked scraching his head.  
  
"Oh, yes, but she just started this year, and-" Hermione held up her hand to stop the captain's nervous ramblings as Professor Mcgonagall stood up and started to speak.  
  
"There is no need for alarm, but the prefect's bathroom has been booby-trapped and Mr. Bendvenuto is in the infirmary having the effects taken care of. Don't worry, Dean, he will be ready for the match. But Draco Malfoy, I would appreciate it if you came to my office. Professor Snape is already there."  
  
The small slim blond boy rose from the Slytherin table and followed the head of the Gryffindor House to her office. Audrey Yseulte and Natalie McDonald walked over to the four of them grouped their, both of them looking very angry.  
  
"I bet he did this in hopes that Julian wouldn't be able to play!" Audrey ground her teeth. Rolanda Kemp, the third Chaser of the group besides Natalie and Audrey, came up next and Rona wasn't far behind her, both girls looking worried. Dean assured the girls, one of their Beaters and Chasers, and the girls that everything would be fine, and then turned to Harry.  
  
"Sorry to put the pressure on, but get the Snitch as quickly as possible! I'm just positive that…oh well. I'll see you in the quidditch field straight after class."  
  
Ron and Harry then continued to guess exactly what Draco had done, yet Hermione seemed strangely silent, with eyes narrowed. This went on for a few a minutes, and then the girl stood up abruptly.  
  
"Come on, we can't be late for Transfiguration. Don't worry, after that we'll go see Julian and see for ourselves if he's all right, since you two are so worried about him." Harry agreed and Ron followed suit.   
  
They collected their books and hurried down the halls to Professor Mcgonagall's tower room. They sat in the desks and waited for her to begin, as they did every Tuesday morning. The Professor looked unusually flustered, but for Minevra Mcgonagall, that meant that she had a stray strand of hair wafting in the air instead of being tucked tightly into the bun at the back of her head. Otherwise, her colorless face and taut pursed lips were in their normal positions.   
  
"I know you're all worried about Julian Bendvenuto, but I expect all of you to be up to your usual standard of decorum-" The Professor began with.  
  
But at that moment three of the spare desks were transfigured into a gitar, a pair of bongo drums, and an oboe and then all three began to play music that some of the students recognized as Arabian. Before Mcgonagall could change them back a yellow strip of silk winking silver flew in through the window and twirled around the uptight woman. What sound like a gust of wind blow in and ripped out her hair pins, letting her knot of hair cascade down in coils of brown-black to bounce slightly at the small of her back. Then the gust triggered the scarf to wrap around her head like a turban, which she immediately tore off and she when read the silver embroidered writing, the Professor had this curiously outraged expression on her face, not unlike Uncle Vernon.  
  
But the gust wasn't done yet; next it swished around the room turning the desks into huge springy velvet cushions of pinks, reds, oranges, and gold, including Mcgonagall's into a giant couch littered with midnight blue, magenta, and gold pillows. The wind proceeded to scurry around the room, changing the walls into a burnt orange heavy fabric as it went, and sparks flew as the overhead controlled sunlight flashed and low-hanging oil lamps swung from their pivoting point on the ceiling; the tower had turned into a giant Arabian tent! All the students had their eyes trained on their teacher, trying to decipher her reaction from her stunned but barring this expressionless face.   
  
To their utter amazement, she laughed, "Look at this place! This is some of the best transfiguration of non-living objects that I have seen in a long time! And on such a large scale! Now which of you did it? Hold out your wands…none of you. Oh well, notice how the velvet is soft and flexible instead of hard like our wooden desks…" the voice excitedly went on to examine the other features of the spells used, inviting them to appreciate it, but it essentially summoned friendly chatter and then chaos. Hermione was muttering about someone knowing their Muggle Studies, but Ron had his mouth close to Harry's ear and his fuchsia pillow in hand.  
  
Slowly he drew away and called to a Ravenclaw across the room, "See if you can duck this, Rand!" and hurled his pillow at the other boy.   
  
"Oh yeah?" Rand grabbed his pillow and heaved it at Ron, but the redhead ducked and it smashed into Dean Thomas.  
  
Dean stood up, asked, "Do you want a piece of me?" and pitched his pillow into the general Ravenclaw area and this time hitting one of the girls.  
  
By then everyone had stood up clutching a pillow and anybody who had been sitting in the no-man's-land between the two houses scrambled to their feet and out of the line of fire, taking all the pillows they could grab with them. McGonagall started to stop the fray but a pillow brained her in the conk from the direction of the window, which just happened to be by the Ravenclaws. So the Professor picked up one of the many pillows adorning her couch and joined the fight. Pretty soon all of them were yelling and squealing for the sheer joy of it and the boy's war calls crowded the room.  
  
"I'll get you for that one!"  
  
"You wanna try it?"  
  
"To the Gryffindors!"  
  
"In the name of the Ravenclaws!"  
  
"For all the people without access to pillows everywhere!"   
  
Five minutes before the bell the Professor stopped the hubbub and ordered all of them to start restoring the room to its former impeccable dignity. They did nothing of the sort, instead letting the desks be carelessly changed into blues, reds, and yellows, and the walls, though changed back to their stone texture were left as a battleground between red and blue paint, as both Ravenclaw and Gryffindor girls were involved.  
  
The trio was quite cheerful when they left and they enthusiastically trooped to the infirmary. But the place was in an uproar as well; apparently all the infirmary tools and utensils, down to the last bedpan, had suddenly grown arms and legs and were dancing around the room. One of the thermometers had found a mini trumpet and was playing the mamba for a chain of pill and potion bottles around the room. Another thermometer had found a cello and was playing the tango on one of the beds for chunks of chocolate.   
  
The older patients-including Julian-were chasing the hot water bottle that had stolen Madam Pomfrey's wand while the younger patients watched two unoccupied paper gowns battle out a sword fight with a pair of yardsticks. Madam Pomrey, helpless without her wand, was nonetheless scolding a stethoscope for tottering dangerously on the pole that held up the curtains. As they stared, the rest of the Gryffindor team bumped into the trio from behind.   
  
"What the?" the two female Quidditch players and best friends gawked and the others echoed their sentiments.  
  
Then all eight of them joined the battle against the medicines. The two, speeding as if on brooms, zipped around the room crashing into furniture in full blast after the bedpan. Audrey and Dean stood on one of the beds reaching for the latex gloves swinging from the chandelier up above while Rona grappled with a paper gown for control of a scale. Ron and Harry dived after the potion bottles, which had the effect of either missing them completely or knocking them over and spraying vile smelling liquid all over. Hermione, however, went straight for a broom that wore a yellow scarf around its middle and seemed to conduct the room like it would an orchestra. The girl silenced the broom and the entire room died down. Before long the only voices left were the first and second years complaining about the show being over.   
  
Hermione now held the yellow cloth and she read the silver thread:  
"Cheer up, Poppy! The world's not going to end if you have fun. C.M.M."  
  
Wordlessly she passed it on to Madam Pomfrey, who skimmed it over and left, shaking her head and clucking her tongue, probably to get a glass of sherry. All of the students gawked aghast at the mess left behind by the prank; there wasn't anything in that whole room left intact. Then Hermione rolled up the sleeves of her robe and began to wave her wand around, muttering charms, and the various pieces of the mess began to put themselves together. The rest of the older students joined while the younger students, who hadn't learned the charms yet, watched.   
  
It took a fairly long time, but in the end it turned out to be a game when Rona announced, "Whoever pieces together the last bottle wins a bag of toffees!"  
  
There was a mad rush for the bottles, which had been the worse off after the prank. Natalie won the toffees, and everyone went doggedly back to the rest of the work. Hermione checked that everything was folded and neatly put back into place, and then she had the Gryffindor quidditch team help all the patients back into their beds.  
  
Julian was the last one in bed and they stayed the longest around her, examining the prank that had been pulled on him. There were still red feathers coming out of his arms, and his nose was still the upper part of a beak, but for the most part he looked okay.  
  
"What happened, Julian?" Audrey asked, stroking the feathers.  
  
The boy shrugged, "I went in for a nice soak, but the moment I was submerged under the water I turned into a giant cardinal bird. Why don't you guys leave? I don't want you late for class."   
  
Harry and Ron turn pale, "But…lunch-"  
Alicia frowned at Harry, "You didn't have lunch? Are you going to be able to perform all right at the quidditch match?"  
  
Hermione nodded for him, "Yeah, I'll make sure that he eats something after class. Come on, Harry. We shouldn't keep Professor Binns waiting."  
  
"You only want enough time to get your Arithmacy homework done," Ron grumbled, but he followed anyway.  
  
Nobody in the ghost's class brought anything to class anymore except a doodling pad or a pillow, but a few of the more diligent students brought the textbook for that class and another class's homework.   
  
They said that Professor Binn's had died in his sleep but that he was so devoted to his job that when he died he merely left his body behind and went to work as usual. The boys immediately dropped their heads on their desks, but they're empty stomachs rumbled menacingly. Ron's abdomen ached abominably and he just seemed to itch all over, but the class just never seemed to…and he felt like this only ten minutes in.   
  
Then, a warm, comfortable aroma floated by his nostrils that made his mouth water and his stomach whine with hunger. He lifted his head to see what was cooking…and there, three feet from the droning Professor was a small coal black oven and it emitted a smell infuriatingly like cherry pie. All pairs of eyes excepting the teacher's were focused on the oven by now, and so they were quick to pick up the actions of a rogue piece of chalk on the big blackboard. It was picked up by an invisible hand and it seemed to be hefted for a second, and then it swooped up to the upper left-hand corner, all the while the smell getting irresistibly stronger. In arched, spidery writing, the chalk began to talk.  
  
"There once was a teacher whose name was Binns.  
His voice was tired, weary, dreary, and boring  
And his mind was dim.  
He was so boring, no student has ever stayed awake for his whole class.  
He was so dumb, he never noticed."  
The girls giggled behind their hands while the boys snickered.   
"He was so boring, the headmaster was never able to critique his class;  
The headmaster always fell asleep halfway through.  
He was so boring, all the teachers were prepared at board meetings;  
They brought coffee or tea loaded with caffeine.   
He was so dull, he bored himself to death.  
And then, his ghost was so dumb,  
That it didn't even realize that it had died.  
And now, he is so stupid   
He still hasn't figured out why all the names on his tests were made up  
He is so dumb that he doesn't even know your names.  
He is so blind he doesn't see that half of you  
Are working on your lists for divination class.  
He is so blind, he doesn't hear that all of you   
Are either laughing or snoring right now."  
  
With this Dean Thomas elbowed Seamus in the ribs to wake him up and the giggling, if anything, turned into a series of snorts when the kids tried to muffle their reaction to this poem. As the volume increased, the Professor ceased his recital of the textbook and opened his eyes.   
  
All the students stared right back at him, either having mastered the art of switching from laughter to sobriety, or, as the honest students had to do, covered their smiles with their hands. The Professor cynically rolled his eyes and the closed them to finish his concert. The students' attention returned to the board, but the chalk was resting once again in its slot. Instead, the oven door flew open and imperceptible hands took out small pies, about 6" in diameter, and tossed them into the air where a charm spell like a chair lift took hold of the pies and dropped one over each head. By the time all the pies were out of the oven, there were several burnt fingers and tongues, and the chalkboard eraser was hovering in the air this time, rubbing out all the words written so far.  
  
Then the eraser dropped, merely to be replaced by the chalk and the white stick wrote:   
  
"Try to pay attention in class, Aion. C.M.M"  
  
Everyone, except Binns, stared at the advice for a while before either discussing who C.M.M was or returning to his/her pie. A few minutes passed and the bell rang, cutting the Professor's sentence in half. He turned around to double-check the clock and then caught his first sight of the prank, but before he could turn around to demand which student had done it, all the students were laughing uproariously in the hall. After class Harry decreed that the pie had been both tasty and filling and that he would go to his room to change into his quidditch uniform. Hermione and Ron nodded and followed at a slower pace to drop off their books.   
  
As they were leaving, Ginny, bumped into them, "Hey, Harry was looking pretty red. Do guys know what happened to him?"  
  
Ron chortled, "He's probably trying to keep from laughing." Hermione then briefed the confused fourth year until understanding dawned in her eyes. Ginny wondered aloud who the guilty party was, but Ron was lost for words.  
  
"I don't know anyone with the initials C.M.M," he admitted. Ginny asked Hermione, if she had any idea, but the older girl merely frowned and didn't answer.   
Harry sat in the locker room watching Rolanda and Audrey lean on each other laughing; he had just told them what had happened in Professor Binn's class. Dean came in followed by the rest of the team and so Harry told the joke again.   
  
At the end of the tale Audrey wheezed, "Oh, man, I really wish I could meet this prankster!" They all finished changing and preparing for the match and marched onto the field.  
  
As the two teams strode out to face each other, Dean grabbed Harry's arm, "I'm not sure how long Rona's gonna hold out. We need the snitch early!"  
  
The boy nodded and Dean went up to shake hands with Arron Sarcyn, one of the Slytherin beaters. They eyed each other warily and shook hands tensely, as though they expected the other to have a knife hidden somewhere. On the other side of the line, Draco Malfoy smirked at Harry, grinning in a knowing, infuriating way that made the black-haired boy feel sick; the blond Slytherin boy never grinned like that unless he was prepared to do something nasty.   
  
Madam Hooch, satisfied, dropped her hand and blew the whistle, signaling fourteen teenagers to shoot up in the air. Harry pushed off his legs and soared extremely high, trying to catch the glitter of the golden snitch, but instead the only glitter came from Draco's gold watch, which was unusually only five feet away.  
  
  
"What are you doing, Potter?" Draco sneered. Harry blinked his eyes and focused them on the ground below.  
  
"Trying to ignore you," he muttered. The blond boy's cold grey eyes glinted as he pulled a wand out of his sleeve.  
  
"Stop trying to see the snitch, because you're not going to be able to see anything."  
  
Harry glanced up at his adversary this time and stared at the wand, "But you can't do that!"  
  
Draco shrugged, "You can't train a house elf without cracking the whip. And anyway, we're too high for Madame Hooch to see me or to hear you scream. Quellius!"  
  
Harry immediately felt as though a veil had been draped over his eyes and his jaws glued together. His hands automatically clutched his broom and brought his body down to it, but a cold sweat seemed to make the slick wood even slicker and slippery. He heard Draco laugh and swoop down to look for the snitch. He heard Seamus Finagan's commentary, announcing that the Slytherins scored again and again, and the score being 150 to 30, the Slytherin's lead.  
  
He heard Seamus mutter time and time again "what the hell is Potter doing up there?" But Harry couldn't do a thing while he was blind; what if he crashed into something? Just then he heard a rush of air and a slim, not overly strong hand on his elbow.  
  
A female voice-Circe's-followed, "What did my-what did Draco do to you?!" Harry tried to open his mouth, but his lips were clamped together by the spell, so he shook his head madly. Circe, probably in the invisibility cloak, squeezed his arm gently.  
  
"A curse. Sorry, but I can't perform an anti-curse if I don't know the original curse. Damn that idiot! Listen, do you trust me? I can get you to the snitch, but you need to trust me."  
  
Harry froze; did he trust her? Seamus's voice rang out, "And Slytherin scores another goal, making the score 190 to 30! Gryffindor will need a miracle to catch up if Potter doesn't start acting soon!"   
  
The boy winced at the content of the sentence, and then grabbed Circe's hand fiercely, jerking his head up and down as he did so. The hand struggled wildly for a moment, but then it stilled, even though it still trembled tensely. Yet Harry had no time to ponder this for the next moment his hand was yanked out of its socket as the young woman saw the snitch and dived at it. Harry knew that they were practically plunging downward faster than he could fall and was glad he couldn't see the ground leap up at him. Then the two of them stopped and Harry felt fingers thrust the snitch into his palm and the hand that had led him leave quickly. There were cheers all around and Seamus's sarcastic voice roll down from the announcer's booth saying that while the Gryffindors couldn't win with that score, they were not far behind.  
  
Circe left the blind and helpless Harry filled with a zealous, almost fanatic hatred for her father eating at her mind unbearably; he just always had to cheat, to get what he wanted in a nasty way. She threaded her way through the Slytherin crowd to the lone seeker, who wasn't getting any recognition because he had let Harry get the snitch. Draco looked at the newcomer, seeing a violet-eyed girl with her silver blonde hair up in a big ponytail who he had never seen before. The young woman held out her hand, supposedly to congratulate him on his win, so he took it.   
  
In a flash he felt as though his arm had been yanked out of his socket and then a white burning flash concentrated at his genitals flashed through his body. Circe took her knee away from his privates with a grim satisfaction, muttering, "That's for being a cheater and a lying jackass."   
  
Draco groaned louder and louder as she left and finally the other Slytherins turned to see what was the matter and saw him clutching himself.  
  
Euclid snarled, "Now's not the time or the place!"  
  
Draco wheezed, "I'm not! That- that girl kneed me!"  
  
"What girl?"  
  
"That-that short blonde!"  
  
"What blonde? Where? I don't see anything."  
  
Beneath one of the refreshment tables Circe grinned and clutched the invisibility cloak tighter around her as she watched all the different feet of Slytherins search for that short blonde girl who went up in a wisp of smoke.  
  
~~~~~~  
  
Post A/N:  
Reviewing would be nice, I'll give you a cookie and a mention if you do. : ) 


	6. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Six

A/N, disclaimer:  
  
Gryf: Took you long enough.  
Cloe: Bitch, bitch, moan, moan. You need to remind me otherwise I'll go off and forget.  
Gryf: I reminded you.  
Cloe: You should have reminded me before then it wouldn't have taken so long.  
Gryf: Whatever.  
Gryf: Now what?  
Gryf: Hurry up, I want to go to bed. It's 3 am.  
Cloe: Its a chapter, its still filler, doesn't get good till later. Oh and since ff.net did that weird chapter thing I have found out that up to ch 5 we have over 100 kb, yay us.  
Cloe: Baby.  
Gryf: Nyah. Anyway, anyone that you recognize is most like JKR's, but Circe is most definitely ours, plus anything else you don't recognize.  
Gryf: Mmmm Sleep is good....  
Cloe: Yeah but sleeping in is even better, so with out much ado... I give you Chapter Six *the audience gasps*  
Gryf: Yeah, and I yawn. G'night, folks and good reading! Plus reviewing, don't forget. It doesn't take that long either...me go to sleep...  
Cloe: Good night you big baby.  
Gryf: You're the big baby.   
Gryf: You're taller than I am.  
Cloe: : P just go to bed.   
Gryf: I'm going, I'm going...  
  
*************  
  
Guardian Angel from Hell,   
Chapter Six, Yep still filler  
A Harry Potter Fanfiction  
By Gryffith and Cloe  
  
*************  
  
Chapter Six, Yep still filler  
  
The different tables were in an uproar the next morning over breakfast. The Ravenclaws were afire with would-be detectives trying to figure out who was responsible for the pranks and the Hufflepuffs were just as bad. The Slytherins were upset by the idea of their prized, or rich rather, seeker getting it between the legs and were clamoring accusations to each other and at the Gryffindors. The rumor-correct for once-spread like wildfire through the Gryffindor table that Draco Malfoy had sabotaged their seeker and so they retorted that anyone who had the privilege of giving a Malfoy what he deserved should get a medal.   
  
Harry picked at his eggs and fed Hedwig bits of his bacon, which she snapped up appreciatively. Hermione worried over the latest letter from Sirius, who was trying to follow Voldemort's discouragingly cold trail just like all the other aurors, though the Animagi was much more cheerful than the other aurors, having suddenly turned from the hunted into the hunter.   
  
"Cheer up, Hermione," Ron stuffed some bacon into his mouth, "You-know-who has been loose before. And what's more, Sirius isn't being hunted like a fugitive anymore. And besides, things are doing pretty well; have you ever seen Malfoy crumpled up like that before? Ha! Serves him right, too."  
  
The girl shook her head, "I don't know. We should really tell him about Circe. She's causing a lot of trouble."  
  
Harry stopped feeding his owl for a moment, "Are you crazy? She's not the one doing that; Malfoy is the one who causes all the problems. And beside, what harm can she do? She helps, Hermione, how else could I have gotten the snitch?"  
  
"Yeah, and she asked us not to tell anyone!" Ron backed his friend up stoutly.  
  
Hermione stood up clutching her plate; "I can't believe this! Harry is blinded a broom and a Quidditch game and Ron is blinded by…what other than those big yellow eyes! Don't stop me!" she glared at the boys, "I know how you were with that Firebolt when you first got it! You wouldn't even consider that it had been tampered with, even though your life could have been at stake! And you!!! Ron, every pretty girl that passes buy is just plain and innocent in your eyes! You couldn't even look at Fleur from Beauxbaton without getting that dreamy look in your eyes!"  
  
And with that, she went over to sit next Neville while everybody else at the table wondered what the hell had happened. Even Harry and Ron looked dazed and confused. Nobody had paid attention to what the famous-or infamous among the Slytherins-trio had been talking about, too absorbed in their own argument, until they had actually separated.  
  
Hermione wouldn't talk to them in their Charm's class that morning, though she had all the chances in the world. Discipline was completely disregarded when all the pillows in the room transfigured into firecrackers, jumped into their and danced around to the Nutcracker theme played by a charmed violin, flute, and clarinet trio. All the students spent the entire class period giggling, chatting, and laughing as a very flustered Professor Flitwick made hilarious attempts to change the colorful displays of sparks and confetti back to their original cushion forms. Their teacher's small and cherub-like body kept on being blown this way and that and then doused with purple, yellow, or red glitter as any fireworks that he got near to exploded. Yet Hermione still ignored the boys, instead she talked with Lavender and Parvati, the two other girls who shared her dorm room. Ron commented resentfully that Hermione seemed to have gained plenty of people skills over the past year.   
  
And not even later that morning would the girl even deign to spare the boys a glance, not even when Fang, Hagrid's giant wolfhound, mysteriously grew wings that carried him high above their heads. The poor dog whimpered non-stop and had had to bark continuously before he had distracted Hagrid enough from his firoxes, small energetic foxes with fiery tails, to look up. Hermione had jammed her finger in Fang's direction and glared pointedly at Ron and Harry for a while, but what point she was trying to make they couldn't figure out so she just gave up and tried to cuddle a baby firox.  
  
But even this was a disaster as it bit her right thumb instead and when she yelped and dropped it, its tail scorched a hole clear through to her Muggle blue jeans and periwinkle sweater; it was cold out there in December. To make matters worse, the hurt thumb began to shrivel like a red-orange raisin. Above Draco's jeering laughter, Hagrid released her to go to Madame Pomfrey and then he went on hesitantly about the effects of the venom found only in a baby firox's incisors. Nobody listened much, until he mentioned that they would be collecting the venom using sponges and they would be studying the collected venom in their coming Potions class with Professor Snape. At that news all the Gryffindors groaned, Harry and Ron the loudest, though they groaned at any mention of the hated Potion's teacher. So the two boys helped Hagrid pass out the compact balls of green fluff to all the students and then they paired up together to tackle their specimen.  
  
The firoxes, grown and newborn alike, had long silvery-white coats ideal for winter and were hard to see against the snow if they escaped. The mature firoxes had long, lustrous tails of pale blue and splashes of gold, meaning very hot, but the babies sported easy-to-see but threateningly bright orange and yellow tails. Even without those tails the task was hard enough as the parents were protective and their teeth were sharp.   
  
By lunch, everyone was exhausted, slightly crispy, and a little red in places, though no blood had spread that much due to the temperatures outside. All the students were starving, but Ron and Harry just grabbed some hot rolls and plodded their way to the infirmary. Hermione greeted them civilly, as she would new acquaintances, and the boys felt it keenly. But there wasn't anything they could do about it, so they checked that Hermione's thumb was okay-fortunately the venom had been stopped in time by Madame Pomfrey-and walked with her…or behind her rather, back outside to their Herbology class, double period and that meant all afternoon.   
  
Most of the other students were still at lunch, so the trio was the first to reach the series of greenhouses, and even though they had been going to greenhouse six a lot, Professor Sprout was bustling about the front of greenhouse three. As they got closer to greet her, they could see their teacher was acting strangely and her face was oddly contorted.  
  
"Are you all right?" Ron approached cautiously.   
  
Professor Sprout scrutinized them for the moment, then waved her hand at the greenhouse,   
"It's a madhouse in there, and I want to know who did it!"   
  
Indeed, they could hear even outside of the greenhouse, soundproof though it was supposed to be the reverberations of incredibly loud music and screeches.  
  
Hermione tapped her foot for a moment, then announced, "I know this song. My parents play it a lot and its called "YMCA," but I never found it very interesting. And those shouts…those are adolescent Mandrakes, aren't they?"  
  
The professor nodded and handed them three pairs of earmuffs, "This prank is enough to drive any teacher mad!" All three muttered something along the lines of, "We've seen a lot of those lately," but they went in obligingly.   
  
Yet, the inside of the greenhouse met some of Sprout's description, as the entire place was crowded with swaying, jumping, and wiggling plants. A group of teenage Mandrakes had climbed out of their pots and someone had given them what Hermione recognized as a Muggle record player, which explained the YMCA song, but to match the music was floating red, yellow, and purple mage lights and a huge disco ball hanging from the ceiling. To make it worse it looked like the entire place had been toilet papered and there was crepe paper strewn throughout the building and the plants were decorated with tasseled white and yellow scarves and one of the bigger Mandrakes, a ringleader most likely, had a orangey-yellow sash around his waist.   
  
By now several other fifth year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs had entered the greenhouse, armed with pink fluffy ear muffs, but once they entered they just stood there, stunned, until they were bumped into from behind by other students waiting to get in. At least half the boys were doubled up laughing at the peculiar figures of the dancing Mandrakes and all the girls were giggling uncontrollably. Even Sprout had a hard time keeping her mouth from letting out a large belly laugh. Someone had taught the Mandrakes several dance steps from Muggles, from the typical YMCA dance, which the leader was doing, to several other things.  
  
A big male was jiggling his hips and jamming his left hand, pointer finger extended, from his right hip to the air to the left of his purplish leaves. A female was bent over trying to imitate the Charleston, but all she was achieving was tripping over her knees and falling in the soil while a pair, male and female, was doing the tango behind her. Another pair was imitating the jitterbug and the last female was trying to do the Grapevine, although every time her feet crossed she fell and tripped. At last though Professor Sprout went over and tried to guess how to turn off the machine. She waved her wand at it, but the machine, magically powered, as it was to work in Hogwarts, had to be deactivated by hand. She braved the dancing Mandrakes and grabbed the CD player and began to examine the thing, not really knowing what the little bumps on top of it were. At last she grew fed up and just threw it onto the ground as hard as she could, spraying screws, plastic shards, and microchips everywhere. The Mandrakes immediately began protesting the cancellation of their fun and they began screaming their loudest and they tried attacking the students, but Professor Sprout and a few of the more brawny boys helped shove them back into the pots one by one. Hermione rushed into help and found herself face-to-face with the ringleader-and the sash. Her eyes widened and she snatched the sash away from the Mandrake as Seamus crammed him into the pot of soil.  
  
Panting, all the boys ran all over the greenhouse tearing down the toilet paper and the scarves while most of the girls followed up with spells to temporarily freeze the plants. Hermione stood there, reading the winking silver embroidery:  
"Remember to let your charges have a little fun! C.M.M."  
  
Lips pursed, eyes narrowed, and thinking cap jammed on, Hermione wordlessly passed the scarf to the teacher who read it and started giggling.  
  
"What's so funny?!" Hermione demanded, but when she realized nobody could hear her-she couldn't even hear herself-she ripped off her earmuffs and tore off her teacher's.   
  
Professor Sprout stared at her student for a moment in surprise and then recovered, "I thought I told you never to take off anyone's earmuffs without my signaling you to do so!"  
  
Somehow silence resonated in the greenhouse, deeper than the silence installed by the earmuffs; Hermione was being reprimanded by a teacher and by Professor Sprout no less. When they saw their teacher without earmuffs and the tense situation, they gradually took off their own earmuffs to listen.  
  
Hermione, unconscious of her fellow students, stared stonily at the floor before answering, "The Mandrakes were all planted and it was safe. I wanted to know what was so funny." Seamus walked up and tapped Hermione on the shoulder. When she turned he put his left hand on his hip and gawked at her a bit.  
  
"You wanted to know what was funny? Haven't you been watching those Mandrakes? They were doing things like this!" and he began bouncing his hips and pointing his right forefinger at first his left hip than straight into the air and repeating it again and again. Everybody laughed at his impression and some of the other boys joined him just to show Hermione how hilariously stupid they had looked. Professor Sprout laughed along with the rest of the students…until even Hermione couldn't hold back a smile, which erupted into a peal of laughter.   
  
Outside on her broomstick, hidden by Harry's cloak, Circe listened stunned to the laughter within; the Head Sergeant Master never laughed and when she smiled, it sounded as though her face resisted such an unfamiliar gesture. Of course here, in this time, she hadn't yet experienced the loss of Harry…and she shouldn't have to. The young woman felt a pang of duty when she thought of her teacher, who she respected in spite of her lack of humor, and of the unstable times in which she wasn't supposed to be. But those sentiments vanished when she thought of the fun planned tomorrow and the day after.  
  
Circe buried these thoughts, not wanting to consider the future-her present-or the consequences of her actions. So she shifted her hips slightly, hardly noticeable but the broom took the hint and raced silently off towards the school. It was a matter of minutes before she was across the kitchen threshold and taking off the invisibility cloak. None of the house elves noticed her much, too busy and happy with their work. But as soon as a pair of giant blue eyes saw the small slender figure hanging up the shimmering fabric several of the elves trooped up to her and began asking what she needed.   
  
"Oh, I'll just take a taco and some butterbeer, please," the young woman unconsciously rattled off one of her more customary orders. The three pairs of eyes widened at the order, extremely puzzled, and gawked at her dubiously; what was taco? Unnerved by their unswerving, if obedient, stares, the jitters quickly changed to anger and Circe glared down at them furiously.  
  
"I gave you an order! Now carry it out!"  
  
Dobby, of course one of the three, timidly began to open his mouth, but then shut it abruptly. Circe saw the gesture and snapped, "Don't make me repeat myself! Now go!"  
  
"STOP RIGHT THERE!"  
  
The young woman whirled around, extremely startled, and started slightly when she saw Hermione striding purposely towards her. Hermione, plain brown hair streaming behind her, stopped just short of colliding with the older girl and slapped Circe hard on the cheek.   
  
The taller student, though younger, seemed struggle with agitated and hard to swallow words before sputtering, "These elves are not your personal property, "Circe!" You will treat them with respect!"  
  
Dobby's eyes, instead of lighting up at the actions of his defender, blazed and he leapt in front of the young woman, who in fact seemed more in shock than anything else. The elf glowered at the friend of his hero; "Stand away, Hermione! Dobby will not allow you to yell at my mistress so!"   
  
The girl's finger shot out at Circe, "You are a Malfoy! And you are the prankster!" While the young woman merely gaped back at Hermione, being too startled to paralysis, she did not deny the charge and Hermione threw her chin up triumphantly.  
  
"I knew you were the prankster! And a Malfoy at that!"  
  
Dobby's infuriated body seemed to swell at that announcement-for those words held no emotions other than pride, anger, and malice-and pointed his own knobby finger at Hermione, "Leave now! You have no place here!"  
  
Astonished beyond thought, Hermione numbly obeyed the suddenly booming voice and left the kitchens. Silence reigned after her departure, though a few of the elves cheered faintly at the loyalty Dobby was finally showing his owners. Circe sank to her knees in front of the elves, staring into space. Dobby placed his hand on her shoulder, worried. The young woman winced visibly at the touch, but regained her composure and straightened the elf's shirt as thanks, but she couldn't manage more than a croak, not yet.  
  
When she could, she thanked him for standing up for her but she canceled her order and replaced it with a demand for some strong whisky, a muggle drink to be sure, but one so commonly asked for in the wizarding world that the elves could comply. She realized that her appetite had completely vanished-she wasn't even sure if she could any food down-but she refused to acknowledge that there was any reason for the phenomenon other than a natural anomaly that could happen to anyone. After the elves departed, either to get back to work or to prepare her drink, Circe sighed and let her mind ramble, suddenly too exhausted to think about something specific and hold her attention there. What Dobby did may have been loyal through and through, but it sure didn't help much. The HSM dislikes me enough in the present, here a ragged chuckle tore itself from her throat, and now Hermione hates me before I'm even supposed to meet her!   
  
A surge of loneliness flushed through her and settled rankling in her stomach, but Circe resisted the need to cry and purge herself of these feelings. Rebelliously she remembered how her father had constantly raged, "Granger is too clever for her own good!" Not realizing that she was using a quote from the man, she so often fought against to comfort herself, the young woman accepted the whisky and proceeded to gulp it down.  



	7. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Seven

A/N, Disclaimer:   
Gryf: ~yawn~ We've really got to stop doing these things at 3 in the morning.   
Cloe: Yeah I know but this is like the only time you can actually catch me to make me post.   
Gryf: Unless I call at 6 in the morning your time and wake you up. It was so funny the last time I did that.   
Cloe: Ha ha, yeah I was getting up anyway.  
Gryf: Yeah...sure...anyway, here's chapter 6...er...7.   
Gryf: It was chapter 6 before the prologue took up the first slot.   
Cloe: Yeah I really don't like this new system, it had me freaking out for about 5 minutes then I figured out how it worked.  
Cloe: But I still don't like it.  
Gryf: As long as you know how to work it. I couldn't even work the old system   
Gryf: Anyway, here's chapter 7.   
Gryf: It features Hermione, Harry, Ron, the usual. Plus some centaurs and seances. ~Dances around Professor Trelawney's upcoming...something~   
Cloe: Heh I had fun thinking that one up.   
Gryf: I helped! And I wrote it! Well...this is one thing you wrote too...   
Gryf: ~shrugs~ Either way it was fun.   
Gryf: ~chants~ Dingbat, dingbat, dingbat, Trelawney is a dingbat...   
Cloe: Teehee, don't worry you'll get it later O'fateful and not so fateful (you know who you are) readers.   
Gryf: Okay, now for doling out credit where credit is due.   
Gryf: Anything you recognize probably isn't ours.  
Cloe: That's right not ours, I don't really need to be sued and you wouldn't get anything good anyway.   
Gryf: I mean, money, it's not all it's cracked up to be.   
Gryf: Dice! Now dice...if you sued us for dice, that might be a problem...   
Cloe: Who would sue us for dice? Where the hell did you come up with that anyway?   
Gryf: I told you we shouldn't be doing this at 3 in the morning...   
Cloe: ::shakes head:: It's only 1 here.   
Gryf: Let's get this over with. I want to start humiliating Snape ASAP.   
Gryf: ~bows dramatically and then skips off stage~   
Cloe: ::rolls her eyes:: What a Drama Queen, I swear, well on with the show....   
  
********************  
Guardian Angel From Hell   
Chapter Seven, On With The Show  
  
A Harry Potter FanFiction   
By Gryffinth and Cloe  
********************  
  
Chapter Seven  
  
Hermione woke up early Thursday morning just like she did every Thursday. The girl pushed the heavy curtains of her bed to the side distastefully, the normally crimson fabric an impossibly dark garnet shade that looked like clotting blood in the pre-dawn shadows. This was one of those times she wished the sorting hat had put her in Ravenclaw instead of brave and blunt Gryffindor. Not only would there be several other girls getting up the same hour as she every Thursday for Professor Vector's Arithmacy class, but the curtains would probably be a pleasant deep sapphire color.  
  
If she were a Ravenclaw, she never would have known Harry and Ron like she did now, she'd never have risked her life for those thick idiots, and she'd never have felt so responsible for them, as though she was their overprotective baby-sitter. They always took her for granted, they thought deep down that she'd always be there, so no need to see her as more than just a brainiac who alternately researched their quests for them and covered their butts from the suspicious eyes of the teachers. They always trusted her to come through, for if she didn't they had a distinct way of giving her sad puppy dog eyes, especially Harry.   
  
When would he learn that she was more than a walking dictionary? There was that party during the Triwizard Tournament when Viktor Krum had been her escort; Harry had looked at her differently that night, even she had noticed that, but since then he had withdrawn. Was the fool afraid of her or something? Her long-distance relationship with Viktor hadn't worked out in the slightest, not to mention that he couldn't even pronounce her name correctly, but at least he hadn't been afraid to touch her….   
  
She glanced at the other girls in her dorm room, and almost regretted that she was the only one of them who had a class in the morning. Shivering, she shrugged out of her lacy nightshirt and pulled on the long, sensible flannel slacks that she could wear comfortably under the voluminous black robes. She snatched a few crackers she kept aside for herself and chewed them silently, concentrating on the stale crumbs between her teeth and then she continued with her morning routine until she was ready to go.  
  
She looked at the other girls that she shared a dorm room with and almost wished that she could sleep in with them, just get a few more hours just like every other girl in Gryffindor. She was the only one who took the Arithmacy class out of all of them, emphasizing how different she was from them. Again she wondered why the sorting hat had put her among the Gryffindors, but yet again, she brushed the thought aside as unproductive.   
  
Respecting their need to sleep, the girl collected the materials needed for Professor Vector's class and left. She walked briskly down into the common room, where she was joined by a few of the boys from the other dormitory, and pushed through the fat lady portrait. She fell into the line behind one of the boys and silently walked to the classroom, spotless and stark white, imposingly so, but Hermione more often than not didn't mind, being far too absorbed in the lesson and the concepts involved.   
  
Today, however, as soon as she sat down in the sterilized desk she began to squirm uncomfortably under the accusing glares of the various portraits of the more famous Arithmacist Excels. The professor went up and down the aisles, collecting homework as usual, and then sat down at his desk, glowing with the morning light let in threw the only window in the room, one with no glass. Vector's pure, hard voice resounded through the room with no pleasantries or preamble whatsoever, reciting out the day's lesson and concepts in a completely emotionless voice. He stood and drew various geometrical figures and a few charts while explaining their meaning, expecting all of his students to be paying rapt attention so that they could memorize and understand the concepts.   
  
Hermione, usually wearing the most rapt expression, now stared glumly at her hands, twiddling her thumbs. She had a vague idea of what this meaning meant and somehow her attention could not be held. But her mind kept returning to the dilemma between herself and Ron and Harry, but there wouldn't even be a dilemma if that…that…that Malfoy had not come back from the future! How could they befriend that purple-haired floozy when they knew-but they didn't know, did they! They didn't believe her…and what could she herself do about that? Harry was the one who could come up with the options and make the decision of which one to follow, not she; she just gave him the information to make do with. Harry-someone poked her in the arm.   
  
Hermione looked guiltily up at Professor Vector, his cold black eyes, as devoid of caring as ever; all he ever cared about was numbers and coordinates and absolute perfection. He cleared his throat and glared expectantly at his student. When she met his gaze with her own confused and contrite one, he repeated the question, "Ms. Granger, please name the three points of the astronomical triangle."  
  
"Metallah, Atria, and Elmuthalleth," Hermione rattled them off, having memorized all the names of the stars at the beginning of the term when she realized that astronomy, the scientific study of stars, had been added to the curriculum. Evidently Vector, a former Muggle, admired the stars' efficient and precise manner in movement and how a complex equation could calculate exactly what they could be doing. Astrology, the study of the stars' effects on human lives, was mere rubbish and was more make-believe than truth and the professor disdained it as such.   
  
Hermione sighed with relief that he had asked a question she could answer, but Professor eyed her stonily, "Thank you, Ms. Granger, but next time could you please refrain from daydreaming so that my class is more than just a free period?"  
  
The girl ducked her head in acquiescence and stared at the board along with the others, becoming as involved with the lesson as usual, and forgetting to expect one more prank from that stranger. But her thoughts, while technically full of numbers in an orderly line, merely covered an undercurrent of loneliness and resentment.   
  
The class shivered as a gust of bitterly cold air blustered in through the open window, but Professor didn't close it even though the weather was exceptionally cold for October, even bordering on November. The students nearest the window smelled a weak odor, a gross and disgusting stench, nearly overpowered by the brisk, airy pine resin morning air.  
  
Circe, trembling with cold and other less obvious things inside the magical but not very warm invisibility cloak, watched the smoky remnants of the dung bomb she had tossed into a nearby elm with grim satisfaction. The bomb would have been a typical prank anyway…. A pair of crows and a half-dozen robins chattered at the girl furiously, sensing her presence whether they could see her or not. Furry-tailed grey squirrels bustled up and down the trunk, acorns and other seeds stuffed in their oversized cheeks, the sharp claws in their furry padded paws clicking on the thick strips of mottled brown bark. Then, all the creatures merely went back to their lives. Circe hugged her knees to her chest and rested her head against the trunk of the large maple tree, regardless of sticky sap or curious insects.  
  
Hermione's thoughts burned just as much as the words she had spat last night; Circe had employed a mind-read spell on the girl when she saw Hermione's oddly recalcitrant behavior. Strangely enough it was thanks to the HSM's lesson that she knew the spell, though the unforgiving-from Circe's point of view at least-head of the time college had meant for the spell to be used as an aide to remain invisible to people of the past. The young woman replaced her hands on Harry's Firebolt-Harry had wanted to see more of her Flaring Zephyr-and went back to the kitchens to prepare for Professor Trelawney-that, at least, was where she could let out a lot of the anger rankling in her stomach.  
  
  
The Flaring Zephyr felt confident and comfortable under Harry's legs and it sped swiftly through the air, spinning circles around Ron's Cleansweep. The afternoon sun had warmed the air and had turned the canopy of the Forbidden Forest an enticing emerald color speckled with olive green shades, but the colors burred together and the exhilarating rush of air blew refreshingly past his cheeks and eddying a bit about his lightning scar. Harry was vaguely surprised that Ron didn't want to ride Circe's broom, but he took advantage of his friend's dreamy expression by taking extra long turns on it. At last, however, Ron's silence began to irk him to the point of worrying about it.   
  
Harry spun around and faced the redhead, "What's wrong with you? You're about as talkative as a vegetable!"  
  
Harry had to repeat the question and another taunt before Ron's eyes focused and responded, "Huh?"  
  
"What's getting your goat, Ron? I just called you a vegetable and a boggart and you didn't even blink!"  
  
When Ron only submerged into that dreamy look again, Harry sighed with disgust, "Ach, I think Hermione was right about you and Circe!"  
  
The redhead snapped to attention when Circe's name was spoken and glared at Harry, "Well, she was just as right about you and that broom!"  
  
"And you-!"  
  
"Look!" Harry whirled around to look where Ron's finger was pointing. A blinding flash silhouetted the screen of leaves, after which the boys caught glimpses of something yellow green, visible against the forest and olive greens of the woods, moving north further into forest. As though possessed of a single mind the two boys sprung through the canopy in pursuit of the mysterious object. Harry could vaguely see what looked like a billowing cloth but then he had to dodge the trees before he could discern anything else. Yet even so the Blazing Zephyr soon came near enough for Harry to just…reach…and-WHAM!!!  
  
Ron, a few yards behind thanks to the slower pace of the Cleansweep, stared at his friend knocked flat on the ground by a still swinging branch…and grunted when another branch took him in the chest and his Cleansweep swept out from under him. A command was barked somewhere to his right-Ron couldn't tell exactly what it was-and hoof beats thundered to his left, on the other side of Harry, following the runaway broom.   
  
Clop-clop clop-clop clop-clop pierced the gloom a few feet from the redhead and a centaur, a yellow-brown palomino with whitish blonde hair, stepped into the tiny space that didn't have every inch covered by trees and grabbed the Blazing Zephyr from where it quivered waist high, only inches from where it had been when Harry had been knocked from his seat. The centaur, grey eyes sparking, examined the broom nonchalantly and then leaned it against a tree. He then bent and picked up the two boys by the collars of their robes, setting them onto their feet. Ron fumbled for his wand, but his friend scrutinized the centaur a moment before offering him his hand. The centaur frowned at the hand for a moment before grasping and shaking it with his own.   
  
"Firenze," was Harry's one-word greeting.  
  
The centaur inclined his head, "Harry Potter. You've grown."  
  
The boy rubbed the back of his head, "Why did you knock us down?"  
  
The roar of galloping hooves drowned Firenze's answer and two centaurs reared into camp. The first to arrive was a female, smaller and obviously younger than Firenze, with blue-black hair, coat, and tail. She just had time to place the Cleansweep by the other broom before a larger male, larger and brawnier than Firenze, overshadowed her.  
  
"Firenze!" he bellowed, "What is the meaning of this! We are not to interfere!"  
  
The female, delicate and tiny she may be from her youth, spoke up before the other male had opened his mouth, "Bane, there is already interference by the stray comet. She will either burn up or prevent the supernova, but she has already entered the galaxy and nothing we do will change that."  
  
Harry's eyebrows furrowed and he glanced at Ron, out of habit most likely, and grimaced. The redhead was gawking, mouth ajar, at the female, most likely entranced by the sorrowful blue eyes and the earthy, bubbly voice, but an elbow in his side quickly changed that.   
  
Firenze nodded appreciatively to the female before waving her away and facing Bane once more, "Branwen has made the point. And we can either help or hinder fate."  
  
The big centaur grunted furiously, "Ronan will see to the end of this," and stomped off. Branwen clopped forward and handed the boys their respective brooms.  
  
"Mount and leave, Ron and Harry," Firenze commanded.   
  
They mounted, but Harry turned back one last time, "Why did you stop us?"  
  
Branwen scrutinized the pair with those rueful eyes of hers and then glanced at the sky, daylight though it was, "Mercury glows red."  
  
The boys appealed to Firenze for a translation but he merely grimaced and repeated the statement. Disappointed, they left and went back to the castle, Harry swapped the Firebolt and the Blazing Zephyr, and the boys retired to the Gryffindor common room until their Divination class of Séances.   
  
  
Circe checked the clock in the kitchen…fifteen minutes until Professor Trelawney was shown up. Quickly she checked her purse for all the things she would need, slipped on the invisibility cloak, and crept up to the high tower in which the bug-eyed phony spent most of her days. She arrived just after the horde of students climbed into the turret and stumbled through magically enforced twilight darkness and noxious fumes to their seats. Following them up, the young woman searched for a discreet corner to hole up in, but the only corner far enough away from Trelawney was occupied by Harry and Ron. Grinning, she realized that the pair would most likely enjoy being in on the joke and tiptoed over to the pair.  
  
"Pssst! Harry!" hissed the empty air beside him, almost making Harry drop the aromatic candle he was fiddling with. Behind the cover of the rickety table an extra poofy cushion inserted itself between the boys and invisible elbows nudged them aside. After a few muted exclamations, Harry muttered, as if to himself, "What in bloody hell are you doing here, Circe?"  
  
"Having some fun, what else?" was the whispered reply, tinged with smug mirth.   
  
Ron's eyes bulged, "You're the prankster? But I thought Fred and-"  
  
A tangible, if invisible hand cupped his mouth before his whisper grew too loud, "No, you'd think they were, but they're not. Now, I've wanted to get Trelawney for a while now, but I am gonna hafta say some spells and if you two could make sure nothing's heard…" and they nodded "good. Now pay attention to the teacher."  
  
As the boys trained their eyes on their sparkling teacher, eerily like the stereotyped witch with a bubbling cauldron in front of her-Hermione had looked it up when they told her and said that while many things were required for a séance, a cauldron wasn't one of them; their professor used a lot of special effects to keep fans like Lavender and Parvati hooked-Circe dug into her bag. The first thing she pulled out was a small pack of small smoke bombs, just a common muggle toy popular in America for their Independence Day holiday, although no one in England could figure out exactly why they celebrated it.   
  
Dexterously she tossed them out to the three corners on the room-Trelawney was situated in the far corner-and a few rolled directly in front of the cauldron, creating a mist effect. Their teacher's eyes, magnified by her thick glasses, widened for a moment but then they half-closed, letting her students believe that she had expected it. Most of the fifth years, mostly the girls, leaned forward with halted breath; today was the first time Professor Trelawney actually let them see a séance, before then all they could do was study exactly what a séance was: retrieving a soul from the realm of death for the sake of a few questions.   
  
The prankster pulled next out of her bag her wand, after checking to make sure it was her wand and not one of Fred or George's trick wands, and a crystal goblet purloined from the kitchens. She muttered a few words, obscured by a suddenly coughing Ron, and pointed at the windows and at the goblet. Before she went any further, however, Circe listened to what her victim was saying, so that the timing would be perfect.  
  
"So you see," Sybil Trelawney murmured in a low trancelike voice, "Everything is aligned and in order. At any time now-"  
  
On the word now, Circe pronounced the final syllable in the spell used on the windows, letting in gusts of wind that whistled near the ceiling but refused to come down and blow the haze away from the charlatan. Next she licked her finger and ran it over the edge of the crystal, around and around and around, and the spell took the spine-chilling note and amplified it from behind Trelawney, as though a loudspeaker had been placed behind her, minus the static and electrical failures.   
  
The majority of the students were watching the cauldron with rapt and anticipating eyes, while a few of the more bored students either stared at the floor or took an uncomplimentary notice of the fact that the professor's face was glistening with sweat and uncertainty.   
  
She stopped running her finger around crystal and let the eerie note die out, then she pulled a golden ribbon from her purse. She muttered a few words and tapped the ribbon and finished the spell by throwing it up in the air above Trelawney head. Instead of falling, the ribbon twisted, stretched, and hovered 6 feet from the ground right next to the faker's chair, in clear view of the class, revolving around the column of purple-grey smoke like a barbershop pole.   
Next Circe waved her wand and sculpted the smoke into the form of a woman; the bottom a few inches from the rim of the cauldron flaring out into ornate robes with alien script on the trim, long hair that fell into ringlets around her shoulders and down her back, and a look in her eyes…Ron swore it was familiar, and, after thinking a bit, he decided that the invisible girl beside him shared that expression of smiling maliciousness. The tall and sinuous woman with flashing eyes proudly stood up and pointed at Professor Trelawney accusingly with one long manicured finger. The ribbon soared up to spin around the smoke woman's head like a hypnotic crown. A flowing jet of a fluent language spilled out of the smoke woman's mouth while the ribbon snaked into a rotating band of fluid symbols.  
  
Professor Trelawney stammered perfunctorily at the smoke woman.  
  
"Sybil Trelawney," the woman mouthed and the words scrolled out on the golden ribbon, "You really need to touch up on your Greek!"  
  
Professor Trelawney blinked in surprise then cleared her throat, "O-oh spirit from the land of the dead - uh who are you?"  
  
"You? Not recognize me? I am Circe, the enchantress. Even the muggles knew me, feared me, and remember me still in their embroidered mythology!"  
  
"Oh…er…what do you want?"   
  
The woman seemed to shrug with annoyance, "I have come to warn you, to bring a prophecy to a blind prophet; a raven-haired child shall be the one who brings about your destruction."   
  
Lavender and Parvati gasped Professor Trelawney paled slightly and lost her sleepy mystical look. The class eyed all the black haired people with suspicion, Harry and Ron sunk into their chairs trying not to laugh.   
  
"A raven-haired child? Wh-who would do such a thi-Could you be more specific?"   
  
"Listen, you dingbat, I'll put it in simple terms. You're going to get killed and a kid with black hair is gonna do it, you got that?"  
  
All the boys snickered and Ron and Harry almost fell out of their poufs in the attempts of muffling their glee. Even the curly, elegant script lost its finesse and the gold ribbon seemed to writhe angrily and uncontrollably-mainly because the female Malfoy giggling on the floor was having a hard time controlling the ribbon. Trelawney's mouth worked closed and open like a fish's as she gaped at the suddenly bold ribbon.   
  
The gold gleamed and the smoke lady's eyes flashed, "Pathetic! You call yourself a mistress of Divination? You can not even divine a stick! Look at this! You don't even need a cauldron for any of the spells you teach!"  
  
"How-what do you know of what I teach!?!?" Trelawney demanded.  
  
The smoke lady laughed, "I may be a dead sorceress, Sybil Trelawney, but I was a good one, not a stupid one! I know divination when I see it, even if I lived on that Grecian island for a few centuries, so don't backtalk to me! I believe it is time to leave, but I will give you one piece of advice, least I can do. Smarten up, Dingbat!" and with that the sharply detailed, if ephemeral smoke lady collapsed in on herself, sending puffs of smoke all over the room, hiding the ribbon that was sizzling and then dissolving in the steaming cauldron.  
  
The girls rushed all over to open windows and clear the air, and once the smoke was gone Lavender and Parvati discovered their beloved teacher to be lying on the floor and feet up in the air, the cause of the position being Trelawney's filmy robes had caught on a wire sticking out of her pouf and holding her legs up along with the dress. The boys were grunting, guffawing and pointing to the professor's bare and somewhat hairy legs and her pointed slippers; Ron thought he was going to explode if he tried to hold in his laughter any longer. A high-pitched giggle was emitted and echoed from just above Trelawney's neck as Circe's spell finally died away.  



	8. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Eight

A/N and Disclaimer:   
Cloe: Hey look I'm not posting it at 3am for once.   
Gryf: Congrats.   
Gryf: But I wish it was 3 am...   
Gryf: ~whines~ I seem more awake then!   
Cloe: Fine, you wanna wait and then we can write this?   
Gryf: Er...no.  
Cloe: ::looks smug:: Didn't think so.   
Gryf: Whatever. Ok, disclaimer.   
Gryf: Anything not JKR's is probably ours.  
Cloe: And if that isn't ours its someone else's.  
Gryf: But the ideas for what Snape...eh...goes through...is all ours.   
Cloe: In this chapter you will find, more pranks, a new (and utterly unimportant) DADA teacher who you never meet, and a nasty replacement...who heh heh you'll see.   
Gryf: And the nasty replacement isn't an accident.   
Cloe: Oh one warning if you have a week heart or are pregnant or taking medication, proceed at your own risk.   
Gryf: Yeah, you just might laugh yourself into a heart attack.   
Gryf: BTW, in case anyone is curious, we're not even half done with this fic.   
Cloe: Yeah, and we're already starting a prequel called 'A Certain Sense of Irony'.   
Gryf: But it's not posted yet...or will be for a while.  
Gryf: Once it is, it will soon be joined by a sequel...a sequel of that...and hopefully thousands of reviews!   
Gryf: ~continues to dream hopefully of plentiful reviewers~   
Cloe: So look out for more up dates, we'll finish this and start on those ... eventually.   
Gryf: Remember, if you have any suggestions for outfits or cameos, email me at Lizmystic@aol.com.   
Cloe: Yeah, don't email me 'cos I'll just forget.   
Gryf: Yeah, I'm the packrat. I'm even logging this...I think...maybe not...nah.   
Gryf: But I am the packrat, so if you email me what a suggestion, 99% it will get in.   
Cloe: Unless I don't like it.   
Gryf: Which can be discouragingly often, but please don't be discouraged.   
Cloe: Chances are if its funny, or really imaginative it will get in somewhere.   
Gryf: And we'll even start a thank you list at the bottom and include you.  
Cloe: Yep, so onto Chapter Eight?   
Gryf: Yeah, it's almost done.   
Gryf: I just have to get past the hail and the wind...   
Gryf: To the transfiguration part...even if Circe is a passable weather witch.   
Gryf: Er...I'll shut up...   
Cloe: Thank you.   
Cloe: And Gryffith? This chapter I'm about to post, is chapter eight.   
Cloe: You are thinking of chapter nine.   
Gryf: Ok...then chapter 9.   
Gryf: If the prologue had a slot for itself, then chapter 8 would stay chapter 8.   
Cloe: Yeah yeah. We've had this conversation before, Gryffith my dear, lets not get into it again.   
Gryf: You started it!   
Gryf: And don't call me dear, there's nothing "dear" about me.  
Cloe: I'm not listening, I'm not listening ::plugs ears:: lalalala I can't hear you.   
Gryf: Ok, we need to stop soon...this A/N is almost longer than the chapter!   
Cloe: ::umplugs one ear:: I'm posting now, dear. So stop talking, sheesh.   
Gryf: ~sticks tongue out at Cloe and leaves~   
Cloe: ::smirks:: I'm still getting the last word. . .   
  
  
*******************  
Guardian Angel from Hell,   
Chapter Eight, AHHH! He has Chicken Legs!  
  
A Harry Potter Fanfiction   
by Gryffith and Cloe  
*******************  
  
Chapter Eight  
  
Ron yawned awake the next morning in the shadows of his canopy bed, woken by the sounds of someone scrabbling in the next bed, Harry's bed. He sat bolt upright, suddenly tense and uptight and having freaky flashbacks of a figure standing over him with a knife-who he now knew to be Sirius Black and who he knew held no grudge against him-and hearing again and again Neville being scolded for writing his passwords down only for a stranger to find them.   
  
Muscles taut, Ron slipped his fingers around the pull-cord and yanked it down vigorously, sending the curtain flapping to the side and to find himself staring into Harry's startled green eyes. Relieved, he sat back in bed, "What the hell are you doing, Harry?" He looked out into the twilight darkness, "And what time is it?"  
  
Harry sighed, "I'm looking for the map. And the clock is over there."  
  
The redhead glanced over; the red lines were arranged in the shape of 5:39 AM. "Ugh, when I get back to sleep it will be time to get up! Oh and which map are you looking for?"  
  
"The marauders map, Ron."  
  
"But-I thought it was confiscated!"  
  
"No, I got it back. I want to keep track of Circe this time."  
  
"Oh…ok. What day is it again?"  
  
"Friday."  
  
"Oh man…Professor Fwelip and Snape! What a combo…if they teamed up they could bore and bully the world to death and it would be theirs to command."  
  
"Oh hush, don't compare her to Snape; she may be bore, but at least she's not a bully."  
  
"I don't think so. I think a bore's as bad as a bully. Do you need any help looking for that map?"  
  
"Yeah, I remember putting it in this trunk but I can't remember where."  
  
Ron climbed down and helped him look until breakfast about two hours later, and they had cleaned out the trunk almost to the very bottom. From there it was a matter of minutes-   
  
"Hey! Harry, Ron, the others are already at breakfast. You don't want to miss it, do you?"  
  
The two boys looked up at Neville, at each other, and then back at the trunk. Ron stood up, "Come on, Harry, we'll get it after lunch."  
  
The black haired boy nodded and the three grabbed their books and ran to follow the tantalizing smells wafting from the Great Hall. Yet breakfast was a quiet meal for them, mainly caused by the fact that Hermione was still sitting at the other end of the table in the talking with Neville-and looking completely miserable. Finishing quickly, the pair of boys made their way to their Defense Against the Dark Arts class, consumed with the attitude of "we're here so let's get this over with." The problem with that attitude: the teachers seemed to take it as an invitation to spin their class out even longer, especially some of the more spiteful teachers.   
  
Ron entered the room first, looked to the teacher's desk automatically, froze, and then made way for Harry, muttering, "You were right, bullies are worse that bores. I would rather have the bore right now."  
  
Harry walked in, confused, then saw the potions teacher at the defense against the dark arts teacher's desk, complete with greasy, oil-slicked hair and nasty smile. The boys stared in silence for a moment, then the redhead stuttered, "Wh-where's the Professor?" referring to the lean and angular hag who had been hired at the last minute to take the class.   
  
Professor Snape smiled condescendingly, though the expression, so unusually worn, seemed more like a painful grimace, "Unfortunately, Professor Fwelip is a little under the weather this morning. Apparently someone had the bright idea to put an Engorgement charm in her tea. She is in the infirmary right now, recovering. Quite the interesting spectacle…her entire torso was swollen thanks the fumes breathed in and what she swallowed." Snape's eyes glinted maliciously in his now frowning sallow face; it was common knowledge that Snape hated any teacher who had the Defense Against the Dark Arts position.  
  
Ron started too snicker but Harry elbowed the redhead and prodded him to a seat in the back of the room before students coming in got there first. Neville, who had been held up by a trick staircase and a fake wall, stumbled into the room last and was surprised to see Snape sitting at the teacher's desk. Wanly he took the front right corner seat by the chained cabinet-he always had that seat cause he was always last to arrive; the cabinet hadn't been used since Mad-Eye Moody had taught last year (very few of the Hogwarts students actually knew that Mad Eye Moody hadn't taught that year) and rumor had it that inside were a collection of skulls, or a death eater that he kept to torture for fun, or other such things.  
  
Professor Snape took 5 points from Gryffindor because Neville was late, causing all the Gryffindors to groan and whisper complaints to each other. In retaliation to that, Snape assigned the class a two-foot long essay on the habitats and habits of Hurroks, causing the entire class to grumble. Leering at them, the sallow-faced teacher followed it up by lecturing them all on golbats and their properties. Dean Thomas rolled his eyes and scrounged among his pile of books and papers for something to doodle on. At last he discreetly pulls out the naughty magazine his older brother had left lying for anyone to see…or take. He found a blank page, the back of a full-length picture, and took out a pen and started doodling, pretending to take notes. At last Dean finished what he was doing and quickly held it over his shoulder for Hermione to pass to Seamus-all three were used to this arrangement and Hermione usually found Dean's drawings interesting or would add something to Seamus's notes. Hermione took the note and started to glance at the drawings…but saw the naughty magazine picture first. It was the kind of thing one would see at a strip club, made to interest dumb males. Her mouth turned slight upward at the edges as she imagined what a man would say, think, or feel if he was forced into one of those embarrassing outfits. Quickly she dismissed the notion, glanced at the sketches, and passed them back to Seamus. The Irish boy, when he received the folded magazine page, paid more attention to the stripper than to the sketches, much to Hermione's disgust.   
  
The class went on monotonously…until footsteps echoed on the stone along the aisle between the right column of desks and the wall, from the door to the cabinet. The chains rattled and the lock seemed to disappear for a moment, but was visible again with an audible click. Snape glared at Neville, who was nearest the cabinet, but didn't say anything. He was just talking about their venomous wing tips when a high-pitched cackle ruptured his lecture and iridescent lavender smoke began to billow out from behind the chained closet-only Neville heard the small TINK-tink-tink of the metal smoke bomb on the stone floor before it exploded. Snape, who was at the other side of the room, saw the smoke and glared suspiciously. Neville took out his wand and tried to look brave, but only succeeded in looked incompetently stupid. The closet began to clang and clamor and disrupt the lecture, so Snape finally snapped, "Longbottom! Open that door immediately and stop fooling with it!"  
  
Neville gawked at the closet door for a moment, and then realized that the chain, caught on a stray hook, was all that was keeping whatever was thrashing inside from getting out. He gulped and tapped the chain from the hook, causing it to slither with a tinkling fluidity through the padlock and to the floor. The closet doors flew open and out came…Professor Snape! Neville backed away from it, terrified.   
  
Hermione leapt from her seat, "It's a boggart, Neville! A boggart!"  
  
Although she screamed, Neville didn't appear to hear her. The brunette grimaced and then bellowed, "RIDDIKULUS!!!"  
  
The boggart flashed, causing everyone to look away or at least blink, and when they could see again every single jaw in the room dropped. Instead of the customary black robes and boots, the Snape look-alike was foolishly standing in black spiked French heels, its hairy white legs shivered, as the stripper's outfit didn't go any lower than the pelvis. The scanty skirt barely covered what looked like black underwear and three lumps showed in front: Snape's squished genitals. The outfit's top piece was basically an elastic strip of black cloth and looked unnecessary and idiotic against Snape's straight, pale torso. To make it even more embarrassing, red lipstick, pink blush, and sea green eye shadow adorned the man's pasty lips, cheeks, and eyes, not to mention the plastic headband from which two big white rabbit ears stuck up perkily. His face looked like an over-enthusiastic rainbow!  
  
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!" The look-alike Snape had glanced down and sized up his new outfit. His skinny legs wobbled and his sausage-round arms flapped irately as the boggart fought for balance. The room erupted into a surprised but thunderous roar of laughter and the startled boggart tried to take a step forward in the heels but when he put his weight back on them the thin spikes snapped under the strain and the boggart tumbled to the floor, spurring even more guffaws, snorts, and belly laughing. At the very back of the room, Ron thought he heard a clicking noise, but he pushed the notion aside and concentrated on trying not to burst with laughter. Unexpectedly, the boggart exploded and it's ethereal remains blended as silver steam with the purple smoke and gradually both masses of gas dispersed.   
  
The snickers went on for several minutes and then died down as everyone turned to Professor Snape to see what he would do. But it didn't appear as though their teacher could speak, as his teeth were ground together so tight that no glue was stronger and his usually sallow face was so dark a purple that the rest of him must be stark white as so much blood occupied his head. At last his white lips parted and the furious words forced themselves through clenched teeth, "Who let that boggart out?"  
  
Neville stuttered, "Yuh-yuh-yuh-yuh-you did, s-sir."  
  
Dean nodded affirmatively, "Yeah, you told him to."  
  
Snape's pitiless black eyes bugged out at the tall artist and he hissed menacingly, "Did I ask you, *Mister* Thomas?"  
  
Dean shook his head, "No, sir. But you didn't ask anyone. Who else was supposed to answer?"  
  
Harry leaned over and muttered under his breath to Ron, "Prejudiced git."  
  
Ron snorted and the teacher's bloodshot eyes glowered at the redhead and Snape hissed with even more percussive emphasis on chosen syllables, And *what* is so *funny*, *Mister* Weasley?"  
  
Ron coughed to gain time and to cover another guffaw, "Er… ahem… er… do I think what is funny, sir?"   
  
"That is what I asked you, Mister Weasley."  
  
"Er…well the way you say Mister Thomas and Mister Weasley instead of the regular Mister strikes me as bloody hysterical, sir," the redhead replied, carefully maintaining a straight face.   
  
Snape's eyes popped, "Ten points from Gryffindor for that remark! And Miss Granger!"  
  
Speaking above several more snorts, the brunette gulped, "Um… yes, sir?"  
  
"Exactly why, when you said the spell, did the boggart look like that?"  
  
Hermione blushed and carefully avoided looking at Seamus and Dean, "Well, you see, sir, I had recently seen such an idiotic outfit in a Muggle magazine and I had wondered how a man would feel if he were forced into such and embarrassing get up."   
  
"Twenty points from Gryffindor!"  
  
"What for!" Hermione demanded indignantly, hands on hips.  
  
"For being exposed to such magazines!"  
  
One or two Ravenclaws grinned, but the majority looked troubled. Rand protested, "But sir! Hermione only did what we'd all been taught to do!"  
  
"Ten points from Ravenclaw for speaking out of turn!"  
  
No one dared say anything else for the rest of the class and there was a stampede to get out when it was finally dismissed. Unfortunately for the Gryffindors, they'd be going right back to Snape after lunch. In the Great Hall, Harry snagged a bite to eat and then rushed to the Gryffindor common room, followed by Ron. Together the boys collected the marauders map and started to go to potions, but they heard some noises in the far corner of the common room.  
  
"Hello?" Ron called out.  
  
Colin Creevey's head popped up from behind a chair, "Oh, hi Harry."  
  
Ron blushed and frowned while Harry replied, "What's wrong?"  
  
Colin's lip trembled, "I can't find my camera. I've been looking all morning. It was missing when I woke up."  
  
"You've been looking all morning? What classes have you missed?" Harry asked surprise evident in his voice.   
  
Colin sighed, "I'm gonna get it from Professor Sprout, but, oh well."  
  
The fifth years shrugged and exited through the portrait hole. Ron tosses his head back at the room, "Well, at least Creevey can't snap so many pictures of you."  
  
Harry laughed and the boys joked about what could have happened to the camera until they entered the dungeon. Most of the students were already there, so the pair sat down quickly. In a few moments Professor Snape came out from the back room, muttering something about the consistency of the oil he had just finished rubbing over his scalp. The teacher chose a few students to hand out vials of the Firox venom and then began explaining its properties and uses.  
  
Harry was just about to bring out the map when Snape asked a question and called on Hermione's upraised hand.  
  
"When fresh, the venom can be used to burn away warts or other fungi. But if it is prepared carefully it can calm upset stomachs, help heal internal injuries, and keep a person from freezing to death," Hermione answered promptly.  
  
"Five points from Gryffindor," Snape announced. "Stop being so arrogant in your efforts to have a bigger brain than your companions, Ms. Granger."  
  
Seamus shouted, "You called on her! She was just answering your question!"  
  
Harry stood up, "Hey! She doesn't try to be better than anybody! She just wants to be the best!" Several Slytherins snickered and Hermione burned red as Ron pulled Harry back down.   
  
Annoyed the redhead tried to repair his friend's damage, "What Harry meant was that Hermione always tries to do her best, unlike some people, so naturally she would know more. And you can't take points from Gryffindor for that! You called on her!"  
  
Snape took five more points for the disruption and started to turn on Ron, but he felt his head instead, "Why is my head tingling… AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"  
  
The class roared with laughter. Why? For their teacher had suddenly grown a gargantuan purple afro, that's why. The spectacle grow even more incredible, even though Parvati knew no color would clash so against that pallid-now white face than that lurid purple, when purple, ramrod straight braids tight with starched pink ribbons sprouted from his neck.   
But…then hairs on the side of his head began curling and lowering down, setting off a collective disappointed groan from the majority of the class.  
  
Boots and shoes scuffed on the floor and whispers sounding suspiciously like, "Almost!" and "Too bad it couldn't have lasted" ran around the room. Most of the students turned their hands back to the tasks in front of them but a few remained to watch the curling hair. And they watched, waiting for it to stop. And so they waited.   
  
But…the curling didn't stop. The hairs tightened into impenetrable ringlets, faded to a dead brown-gray, and then fell off. One by one, every jaw in that room dropped except one, Snape's never having closed since his scream died down, as all hair on his head except for down the middle fell off, leaving the man with a lurid purple, foot-high Mohawk and tiny little braids on his neck.   
  
And as one, the entire class roared, most of them just laughing, and others praising the prankster for such a sight and a rare few cursing the prankster for the cramp in their sides caused by laughing too hard.  
  
In the midst of the confusion, Harry discreetly pulled out the map and nudged Ron. The two boys sorted with their fingers through all the names there, distracted by all the surnames and annoyed that they hadn't learned Circe's last name. Then, by the doorway, was Circe…Malfoy? She was a Malfoy? How could she be? She was a Gryffindor! She was cool! She was…but it said right there clear as-  
  
"Aha!" the map was whipped from their grasps by a white claw-like hand.  
  
The boys looked at each other aghast and then glowered their loathing at Professor Snape, although they had to swallow snickers and guffaws at the sight of that Mohawk and those braids!  
  
Stifling the urge to laugh with his hatred for the potion's teacher, Ron stood up, becoming a few inches taller, aside from the Mohawk, and reached for the map, "Give that back!"  
  
"Sit down!" Snape barked, holding the map behind him.   
  
But then the map was torn from his grasp and held aloft by two disembodied hands. One hand let go, disappeared, and then surfaced again holding a wand, which tapped the parchment accompanied by the words "Mischief Managed."   
  
Snape sputtered angrily, "Give that back! Show yourself!"  
  
The hand holding the wand shifted the stick of wood to between thumb and palm, and then the fingers curled and pulled something back…revealing a silvery blonde ponytail, brilliant purple eyes, and a cheerful grin. "G'day, mates!" she chirped in an affected Aussie accent.  
  
Draco's eyes bulged, "Th-th-th-that's the girl that that that-"  
  
Circe's lurid eyes rolled comically, "Please do us all the favor of shutting up!"  
  
As the Slytherins digested this astonishing information, the pale hands rolled up the parchment, tucked it beneath invisible folds of invisible cloth, and retrieved a camera. A camera, most of the Gryffindors recognized as Colin Creevey's personal favorite camera, and the hands held item up to her eyes aimed at Snape, "Say Mohawk!"   
  
The black box in the white hands clicked and the little piece of glass on top of it emitted an enhanced flash, forcing everyone in the room to blink and/or look away, and when their vision cleared the disembodied head and hands were gone.  
  
***************  
  
P.S. from Cloe and Gryffith (Ha I got my name first)  
  
A Thank You, to all our friends and fateful readers (even if you don't review), and we'd like to recommend Sinead's "Fifteen years and Back Again" (Sin Head! Say hi to Dai for me) and AngieJ's "Trouble in Paradise." (Thanks for reading our fic, glad you like it.) Also if you are in the mood for dark weird Draco-based fics and filks, go take a look at Lindsey Beth's stuff. (Did that one girl ever stop stealing your idea?)   
  
Remember to Review, we love feed back, and praise if you just wanna give that out. ; ) 


	9. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Nine

AN: Cloe: Oookay I've fixed this, it's been beta-ed, fixed yeah, yeah.   
  
Disclaimer: Not ours, J.K's.   
  
*********************  
Guardian Angel from Hell  
Chapter Nine, In Which I am late and then must fix it  
  
A Harry Potter Fanfiction  
By Gryffith and Cloe   
********************  
  
Chapter Nine   
  
Harry glanced at his two friends, the red head next to him and the brunette at the other end of the table, his expression filled with confusion, anger and worry. Even though the rest of the Great Hall shouted and laughed and ate with even more than its usual enthusiasm, fueled by the day's pranks on Professor Snape, no member of the famous Gryffindor trio could manage to utter more than half-hearted laconic replies to fellow classmates. Hermione glowered at her untouched plate of steaming mashed potatoes and stewed radishes, oblivious to the maelstrom of gossip surrounding her on all sides. Ron grimaced when he realized his little sister Ginny was no where in sight, and neither was that 6th year Ravenclaw he'd seen her with on Tuesday, and the corners of his mouth plunged further with every guess at the identity of the mysterious prankster. Circe, Circe, Circe, Circe...MALFOY!  
  
In an effort to distract his mind, Harry tilted his head back like he did when he wanted to enjoy a panorama of tranquil spheres of fiery light, but a steady pitter patter of icy rain and small chunks of hail tapped like thousands of broken metronomes on the ceiling. Terrific... things just keep getting better and better! Harry sighed and glanced over at the professors' table. At the far end Professor Vector scribbled at something Harry couldn't see. Harry's green eyes zeroed in on Professor Vector quickly before moving on to the teachers next to him.   
  
"No wonder Hermione likes him and his class," Harry mused to himself, "They're so alike."   
  
Professor Trelawney, deigning to eat in the Great Hall as she did on a rare occasion and McGonagall talked quietly, quarreling if their expressions were any clue. Dumbledore, seated with Professor Sprout between himself and the loggerhead teachers, amused himself by following the conversation, stroking his beard, as a little boy would twiddle his thumbs. Professor Sprout leaned toward the other two women after a few minutes, obviously contributing to the debate information favorable to Professor McGonagall, a telling tilt to the Transfiguration teacher's chin and perhaps a triumphant smirk clueing Harry in, but from this distance Harry couldn't tell and even if he had he wouldn't have believed he had seen Minerva McGonagall smirk.   
  
On the other side of Dumbledore sat Professor Flitwick and Madams Hooch and Pomfrey. Pomfrey sat between the two, turned towards Flitwick with her usual careworn, fusspot pucker, her pursed lips moving a mile a minute while the Charms teacher took his covert revenge by dancing his wand under the table and enchanting Madam Hooch's fork and knife to come just short of stabbing the back of Pomfrey's primped gray head. Both Harry and Madam Hooch snickered at the aggressive silver ware and the oblivious Pomfrey.   
  
Harry noticed Professor Snape's empty chair set between Hooch and the placidly dining Hagrid, and the seventh year briefly remembered that Snape was probably trying to wash out the last of Circe's dye before flicking his eyes back to Trelawney and her glittering bangles, ring, and bracelets and swinging hoop earrings. The psychic stood up with a theatrical flair and stormed off the dais in a perverted moonwalk, knocking into Snape on her way so that she tripped and fell into the wall with much less than her usual grace. Harry grinned at her infuriated stance and Snape's refusal to apologize, incidentally jacking Harry's respect for the Potions teacher up a notch in spite himself.   
  
Sitting back smugly, Harry crossed his arms and thought himself quite the observer after watching all of the teachers and interpreting what they were doing. That is, until Ron jabbed him in the shoulder and pointed at the 40' by 20' message scrolling across the wall behind the Professors' table in huge flamboyant vivid violet lettering:  
  
"Farewell to the know-it-alls,  
Farewell to the Fluff-For-Brains,  
No longer will I haunt your halls,  
My memory will be all that remains,  
Feel a little freer  
This place feels too drear,  
Things at times should run-a-muck  
Therefore, don't forget to DUCK!"   
  
Harry had hardly read the last word when his tomato soup splashed, splattering blood red splotches all over his face and robes. Porcelain plates, platters, and bowls clattered, some smashing, on all four of the house tables and up on the teachers' table. Small white spheres of ice, all the size of a small marble, rolled about on the table top and on the floor, only to jump frantically as more balls of ice dived and crashed into the stone and wood surfaces.  
  
"HAILSTORM!"   
  
"Nice way to state the obvious," Hermione grumbled to herself as she joined the professors and the Headboy and Headgirl in shouting umbrella charms to protect the students, confounded by some sort of oily spell that wouldn't let the charms take hold.   
  
The wind picked up, to put it mildly, and howled throughout the hall, blowing out all the lights in the enormous room, not caring whether the lights were flickering flame or magic globes that normally couldn't be touched by any typical movement of air. Whipping the hailstones into a cylindrical cyclone with all of the student strapped within the eye of the storm, the wind whistled and cackled, enhanced by the light female soprano voice singing in the background.  
  
Hermione ran to one of the exits and tried to open a window in the wall of whirling hailstones but none of the charms she constructed could withstand the battering. She shivered and looked around...everything looked like it had been dusted with confectioner sugar! Grumbling, she dusted the frozen flakes off her immaculate black sleeves and promised herself a hot bath after freezing Circe in a block of ice. She opened her mouth to curse the time traveler she knew was somewhere and instead a mouthful of crystallized fluff flew in and started choking her, followed by blankets of heavy snow, burying her in a huge snowdrift.  
  
Ron stood up furiously, searching the covers of the hall, shaking his fist in hurt fury and damaged pride. That Malfoy had a lot to answer for!   
  
Unexpectedly the snow banks started to shrink from the bottom up. The freshly melted snow flowed over boots and chairs into the far corner of the hall forming a nice little wading pool. The air shimmered with heat and the floor was almost hot enough to melt the soles of their shoes, causing many students to stand on their chairs to avoid the heated stone. Ron shook his dripping hands, spraying Harry in the face with water drops stained with juices absorbed from the tomato soup and the venison. Harry made a face at the redhead and wiped his hands on the already red-stained black robe, soon wiping his face of the sweat that dripped down his forehead. He ignored his friend's grimace as Harry shed his robe in the heat, thankful for his habit of always swearing jeans and a tee-shirt underneath the heavy black cloth. Ron, born and bred a wizard rarely wore anything other that his customary robes and therefore couldn't afford the luxury of shedding them.   
  
Once he had tucked the bundle of his robes away, Harry looked at Ron and followed his friend's awed and almost fearful glance at the tall trees characteristic of a jungle being transfigured out of the tall columns adorning the side of the Great Hall. Leafy vines and tendrils stretched upwards until the enchanted ceiling was but a shadow hiding behind a leafy canopy and yellow and orange blossoms spring to brilliance all along the tapering leafy ceiling. A few of the exotic blooms gave way to pearly violet pigeons which flew down to perch on the stone gargoyles cluttering the wall or to deep purple spiraling fruit like corkscrews which broke free from their thin stems and plunged down towards the heads of the students, smashing into a pulpy mess that rapidly crystallized into amethyst bits.   
  
Suddenly a high screeching KREEEEE shot through the air followed by the sight of the depiction of the bronze Ravenclaw eagle from the royal blue banner hanging by the Ravenclaw table fleshing into a living breathing creature. Students shrieked as the eagle, large even for that hefty species of bird, flapped free of the cloth and raked its onyx talons inches from the heads of the many students to perch on the scrolling top of Professor Flitwick's chair.   
  
Dumbly, Harry remembered that Flitwick was head of the Ravenclaw house, so it was only natural that the eagle would fly to him...more high-pitched screams pierced the thick, humid, jungle atmosphere and Harry's head swiveled back to see the Gryffindor lion clawing the crimson banner to shreds, the Slytherin serpent twining its way up one of the huge trees, and the Hufflepuff badger padding over to a corner of the hall and growling at the students nearest her.   
  
Eyes wide, he turned back to the teachers to see their reactions: Professor Vector had bundled up his papers and was shouting cleaning charms at the floor and tables, flanked by Madame Pomfrey who bossily cried out similar spells. Professor McGonagall had climbed on top of her place setting on the teachers' table, shouting out orders to anyone who would listen, comparable to Snape's acid directions at the other end of the room. Professors Sprout and Flitwick did what they did best; Sprout examined the luscious growths and rattled off incantation after spell after charm after incantation to make the plants safely begin to shrink or recoil while Flitwick called out encasement charms to trap the enchanted animals and to shield the students from falling fruit. Madame Hooch must have disappeared...no, she must have summoned her broom for Harry could see her swooping in the air casting spells from her vantage point above them all.   
  
Hermione shook herself off, still drenched from the snow. She could see Ron picking up chunks of amethyst and pocketing them while Harry watched the progress of the teachers, neither giving a damn about her, and then crept out of the hall silently.  
  
In an hour that might have been it for what he knew to be Circe's prank, but out of the corner of his eye Harry glimpsed a swarm of squeaking black winged bats swooping out of the far entrance by the teachers' table. He didn't even bother to try to stifle the laughter that resulted from the immediately following hysterical Professor Trelawney, chased by a bunch of bats carrying the streamer, "Don't hide from the fun AGAIN you old DING BAT!!!"   
  
The divination professor sobbed and bawled, wringing her guano covered handkerchief, which looked much like the rest of her; all her clothes were crusted by the pasty green goop that inevitably fell out of a bat's backside once he was done with it.   
  
McGonagall took one look at the other professor and, startled, began to smile, chuckle, and finally laugh until her sides split unbearably, needless to say not helping Trelawney's affronted mood much.   
  
Snape smirked and called out to the afflicted witch, "Finally met up with some relatives that find they don't like you very much, Sybil?"  
  
"Shut UP, Severus!" she wailed, plopping down on the floor where Madame Pomfrey promptly tripped over her, landing sprawled on the ground several feet away.   
  
"Way to help out, Sybil!" Pomfrey snarled and stomped off.  
  
"Doesn't anyone care!?" Professor Trelawney bawled her thick-rimmed glasses hanging askew and her carefully pale face coming out in unbecoming red blotches.  
  
"No! Now make yourself useful or leave!" Pomfrey called over her shoulder. Harry's jaw dropped in amazement, but then he figured that Trelawney more often than not was never as sick or as powerful as she claimed.  
  
After what just happened, Ron wanted only to go up to bed and laugh himself into an exhausted and well-earned sleep, but Harry, grabbing his arm and pulling him down another corridor, had other ideas. The redhead groaned when he realized where they were headed: up innumerable flights of stairs to the old wing of the school they had first taken Circe to when she had first arrived, although the trio used it for more than just unexpected visitors from the future. The room could only be reached by climbing up seven flights of stairs and going down a winding staircase of about 5 flights. Harry, Hermione, and Ron had found the wing and a particular room into which they liked to go to escape teachers, Mrs. Norris, and Moaning Myrtle. As much as, room had benefits, such as being completely safe for sharing secrets and planning pranks. Ron complained all the way there every time of the unsafe and plentiful stairs, the wing had been abandoned in the first place on the grounds of teachers' and staff complaints.   
  
They reached the old transfiguration room particularly favored by the trio and Harry shoved the door aside, then jumped back. Inside a figure silhouetted against the sunset lifted its head, shadows played darkly across the face, light dancing off the tearstains on the cheeks.  
  
"Hermione!" Harry stepped inside, reaching for her, but the girl's eyes narrowed and glowered at the boys. Hermione stood up and shoved the two of them aside as she stormed out the door and down the corridor back to the school.  
  
Harry started to run after her, but a hand grabbed his arm and pulled him back, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Right now she hates your bloody guts and the last thing she wants is one of you to try to make her feel all nice and happy. She doesn't want to look like an idiot when you go and tell her how stupid she is to carry on like this. Let her enjoy the sulk."  
  
Ron slapped the hand away from his friend and glared down at Circe, enjoying the advantage his height gave him, yet the girl merely peered up at him and smirked patronizingly. Infuriated by the insolence, and conveniently forgetting his own acts of insolence when in contact with teachers, Ron shoved her with one hand in the shoulder, but the force caused her to stumble back and slam into the other wall.  
  
The redhead turned to go into the room and leave Circe where she was, but the other boy grabbed her arm roughly and all but threw her into the room and then slammed the door behind him and Ron. Flooding his anger and confusion into his glare, Harry crossed his arms and snapped at Circe, "You have a lot of explaining to do!"  
  
Circe nursed her arm and shoulder gingerly, shivering violently and ignoring the boys. Carefully and calculatingly, the girl forced herself to take deep, controlled breaths and blow them each out as slowly as humanly possible until the shuddering died off. Then she took out the Marauder's Map and toyed with it in her white, childlike hands, "I guess you found me out with this. It's sad, really. You know barely anything about me and what you do know is favorable, at least I hope you think it's favorable, and yet you are willing to assume that I am evil incarnate because of my surname. Is it such an atrocious crime to be my father's daughter?"  
  
Ron's jaw clenched until a tic began to jump erratically in his lower cheek and then spat the words, "Once a Malfoy, always a Malfoy!"  
  
When Harry nodded fervently in agreement, Circe hopped on top of one of the desks, "Shut up! What the hell is that supposed to mean, "Once a Malfoy, always a Malfoy!" It doesn't make sense! Do you think I chose to be the spawn of a silvery and slimy politician? Bloody hell, you boys are as thickheaded as the two blokes that follow Draco around, and they look empty-headed enough to believe he was their god or something. Who are they, anyway?"  
  
"They're Crabbe and Goyle-" Harry began, but Ron interrupted, "You cannot possibly be comparing us to those idiots, hand-chosen to be Malfoy's slaves by Lucius himself! And how in the entire wizarding world could you not know them? As adults they must be around your house as much as Malfoy himself is!"  
  
Circe rolled her eyes and frowned down at the boys condescendingly, "You boys think you know Draco Malfoy. You think you've go this character down pat. I do recognize the names, but only because they were in the news once or twice, being arrested. I've never seen them before in my life though, and if my grandfather handpicked them, it would explain a few things, because if they even came near our house Father would have flayed them alive. You see, Father disowned the Dark Arts when I was five and after that only had enough contact with Grandfather to confiscate his property and put him into an old-folks home!"  
  
The boys swallowed, rolling the words around on their tongues and slowly accepting the information, and Circe took the opportunity to add dryly, "Of course, the only reason Father did so was to get elected. In that respect, he is very slimy. As much as he is an advocate of the eradication of the Dark Arts, he doesn't help much."  
  
The girl grinned smugly, but Harry wasn't sure he wanted to know what she was so happy about. Instead, he leaned against the wall, a few feet from the door, and queried as calmly as the sudden flood of realizations allowed him to be, "So, you've told us all of this, but what do you expect us to do with it?"  
  
Circe sighed and sat on top of the desk, "I only wanted you to not think of me as just another Malfoy. And, whatever else you want to do with it is up to you. At the moment, I'm exhausted and want to go to bed. All that weather working was exhausting!"  
  
Ron snickered at the memory and yawned. The girl hopped down from the desk and strode over to the door, handing Harry the map as she passed him to put her hand on the doorknob. Her fingers closed around it, then paused and stiffened. "Someone out there," she muttered. She grabbed a handful of Ron's shirt, as he was nearest her, and in one movement opened the door and threw him out into the hallway. Harry followed more willingly, the boys glanced around to see who was walking around in the abandoned wing, and a flash of red hair caught their eyes as a figure turned the corner.   
  
"Ginny! What are you doing here?" Ron demanded. A moment later Harry blurted, "You're a girl, what's up with Hermione?"  
  
The youngest Weasley stared at the boys with a look akin to the one worn by rabbits staring into the headlights of a car, and then the two different questions processed though her brain. Smirking, she chose Harry's question, walking quickly over to them and heaving her armful of books into Ron's startled embrace. Leaning back, she ticked off her fingers, "Well, one thing's that obvious is that she's as mad as hornets at the pair of you. And then there's the fact that she's been hanging out with the girls in her and my dorm rooms, which means she doesn't want you blokes to think that she needs you two and is pining away in agony."  
  
Harry pointed to the room they had just come from agitatedly, "But when we got here she was in here crying!"  
  
Ginny rolled her eyes, "Oh honestly! You boys are really thick! Hermione hates that bunch of gossips and snobs as much as she can hate anyone. Earlier they seemed to be the lesser evil, but she couldn't stand them so she came here where she could cry in peace."  
  
Ron started to speak, but Ginny held her hand out to stop him, "Nope, she wouldn't go to her dorm room to cry. Those girls would have swooped down and picked her to pieces to find out what the matter was, partly to try to help but mostly to get something interesting to talk about, and Hermione knows it."  
  
"But...where else would she go then? We should talk to her and-" Harry floundered, only to be interrupted by Ginny again.  
  
"Hermione would either be in Myrtle's bathroom or in the library, but after Myrtle made her feel completely disgusted with herself and her surroundings, she'd go to the library anyway. And don't even think of talking to her tonight. You'll make her feel like a fool and that's the last thing she wants to feel like."  
  
"And how would you know all this!" Ron demanded indignantly.  
  
Again, Ginny smiled demurely and ticked off her fingers, "I know this by being observant, knowledgeable in such situations, and simply being wiser in the ways of women than you blockheads are. Now if you'll excuse me, I have other womanly duties to tend to."  
  
Ron stared at her hard until she burst out laughing and took her books back. The older brother glared at her, "And what womanly duties would those be, missy? Answer me, Ginny! Would Mum like to know about them? I'll tell her, you know I will!"  
  
Ginny laughed, winked at Harry, and walked to the end of the corridor and turned left out of sight. As soon as echoes of her laughter died down a male voice called out her name and while Ginny was replying, Harry was manhandling Ron to keep the redhead from going in and killing whoever was meeting his sister.   
  
"Ron! Ron! Stop it! Ron!" Harry braced himself and held on to his friend for all that he was worth, but the redhead wasn't listening to him, only to the echoes of that male voice.  
  
Circe poked her head out of the door and caught sight of Ron. Knowing that Harry's grip was secure, at least for the moment, she leaned on Ron's shoulder, "So, Harry. Am I not a girl?"  
  
Harry grunted, "Care to help me out here?"  
  
Circe examined her nails, "What am I?"  
  
"What in the bloody hell does that have anything to do with anything!?"  
  
"You could have asked me about Hermione," Circe chanted in a singsong voice and rested her cheek on Ron's oblivious shoulder.  
  
Ron exerted a little more force and Harry skidded on the tiled floor a little before regaining his balance. Green eyes flashed as Harry cried, "A girl! You're a girl, all right?"  
  
Circe smiled and, straining to get her lips high enough, brushed some locks of red hair to the side and whispered loudly into the revealed ear, "You're just jealous that she's getting more than you are."  
  
The redhead stood straight, putting Circe off-balance and toppling her to the floor, and glared down at her, "I WHAT!"  
  
The blonde used the wall to help herself to her feet and brushed her robe off, then turned and smiled at Harry, "Is that what you had in mind?"  
  
Harry immediately had a coughing fit so that he wouldn't have to answer. Circe took this as her cue to leave. Walking back towards the main building, she called over her shoulder to Ron, "You know, I've always admired your sister. She's never needed anyone's help to get what she wants."   
  
The boys gaped after her, and stood there for a few minutes, simply reviewing what had just happened or if it had happened at all. Harry's hands worried the parchment in his hands, and then he looked down to unroll the map, remembering that he had it. He tapped the parchment with his wand, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," and watched the ink draw itself into the map of Hogwarts.  
  
Ron watched the magic work as well, although he had seen it many times before and wasn't awed, as he had been when Harry had first shown him the prize. The boys stood there thoughtfully, Harry chewing his lip and Ron scratching his head. At last, Harry wiped the map clean by tapping it again; "Mischief managed. I...how in all bloody hell did Circe know how to work this thing?"   
  
  
  



	10. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Ten

Disclamer, A/N:  
Gryf: This was a pretty long chapter, comparatively.   
Cloe: Actually yeah, seventeen in word if your using the page layout, and thirty-two in word if you are using the online layout.   
Gryf: Yup.   
Gryf: This Chapter was fun to write.   
Cloe: ::darkly:: Oh I'm sure you had a ball putting in all those "Hon"'s and "Duh"'s. She's a *Malfoy* for gods sake, she doesn't talk like an american teenager.   
Gryf: ~grumbles~ Well in a lot of ways she looks like an american teenager...   
Cloe: I don't care, she's not an american teenager. Its almost getting to the point where I think we need a brit-beta.   
Gryf: Otherwise known as you, for now.   
Cloe: Granted I am the closest thing we have to a Brit-beta, but I'm lacking a certain something, like I don't know perhaps the fact I'm not British.   
Gryf: ~sticks tongue out~ Well I'm an immature midwesterner obviously, so go on with the A/N.   
Cloe: But I digress. Or perhaps not. ::sigh:: You are not immature altho with that tongue sticking outness, you sure are fitting the part at the moment. But now I digress, in this chapter we finally pick up the pace.   
Gryf: ~nods and sticks tongue back in~   
Cloe: But don't celebrate yet because we slow down and meander off somewhere looking for bunny rabbits.   
Gryf: Hee hee.   
Cloe: How many chapters are we up to now Gryf?   
Gryf: Actually typed on my computer or posted?   
Gryf: I'm typing what would be chapter 17 on FF.Net.   
Cloe: But chapter sixteen in her files because she refuses to change them.   
Gryf: And why should I? The prologue is in its proper place.   
Gryf: I've got to go momentarily, like now, so let's get this over with.   
Cloe: Blah blah blah, not ours, kick peter for me, blah blah blah.   
Gryf: Everything that you recognize probably isn't ours, anything else, like Circe, is ours.   
Cloe: Oh and Andrew if your reading this, hi.   
Gryf: ~gets kicked out by irritating not-so-little brother~  
  
********************  
Guardian Angel from Hell  
Chapter Ten, Trepidation, Sublimation, and Denial (It's not just a river in Egypt)   
  
A Harry Potter Fanfiction  
By Gryffith and Cloe   
********************  
  
Chapter Ten  
  
Hogsmeade cheered Harry and Ron up considerably. Everyone had such good spirits that it was difficult for the pair to stay upset, even considering that Hermione had flatly refused to come down to Hogsmeade with them, plainly preferring the solitude of the library. At one end of the town, in spite of green and golden leaves raining from above, the Creevey brothers had set up what looked like almost a professional photo shoot. Colin had purchased a larger, bulkier camera along with some other equipment that could manipulate color, proportions, and anything they liked. Dennis, the younger brother, was the one in charge of operating that machinery while Colin arranged people against a plain white screen, which could be manipulated later. A long line appeared as if by magic, mostly of couples wanting to get their picture's taken together, and Ron's jaw jutted out furiously when he saw Ginny and Seamus poking each other while in line. Harry tried to pull Ron away, but nevertheless the pair sidled up to the giggling couple.  
  
As Harry tried to get Ron into an arm lock and Ginny tried to hide Seamus behind her, the two other boys glared daggers at each other.   
  
"What the bloody hell are you trying to pull?" Ron demanded.  
  
Seamus rolled his eyes, "And why the bloody hell shouldn't I?"  
  
Ginny elbowed him hard in the ribs, "This is my choice, Ron. What, do you think you can stop me?"  
  
"Yes!" Ron tried to stomp on Harry's feet.   
  
Ginny hit her older brother in the face, not the typical female slap but a nice, tight, perfectly aimed uppercut at eye, throwing his head back with the force. "That," she murmured sweetly, "Is what you would do if Percy told you not to talk to Hermione because she would bewitch you with her female charm."  
  
"Ha! Hermione have female charm? She's a brick, but she's not a prostitute," Seamus chortled. Harry let go of Ron and slammed his fist into the Irish boy's gut personally.   
  
"Boys, boys! You're ruining the day!" Ginny whined, pulling Seamus upright and shoving Harry and Ron away.   
  
Ron raised an eyebrow at Harry, "What prompted that?"  
  
"What prompted you to interrupt your sister?" Harry countered.  
  
The redhead shut up and agreed to go to the Three Broomsticks to get some ice. He turned around once to double check on Ginny and realized his mistake; his little sister was flirting with Colin while Dennis was fumbling with his equipment as he attempted to do all the preparations without tearing his eyes from the older girl's face.  
Harry yanked on his arm and hauled him into the Three Broomsticks and hailed Rosmerta.   
  
The waitress sailed over and clucked when she saw the way Ron's eye was already swelling and changing color. "Well, that's quite a shiner ya got there, chap! Who did ya in?"  
  
Ron's cheeks burned and Harry snickered, "Oh, it was a really big bully, wasn't it Ron?"  
  
Rosmerta eyed the redhead, who towered over her by at least a foot and a half, "A bigger bully than this'n? Him I wanna see!"  
  
Parvati and Lavender, strolling by the threesome on their way out, heard the last phrase. "Want to see what?" Lavender asked.  
  
Parvati looked closer at Ron and hissed, "Oooh, how'd you get that, Ron?"  
  
Lavender's eyes darted from Ron to Harry and back again, "Have the famous duo actually been fighting?"  
  
Ron stared at the floor, "Is there some ice that I can use?"  
  
The waitress chuckled, "Who done it, Ronnieboy?"  
  
"THE ICE!!!" Ron refused to look up.   
  
Harry squeezed his friend's arm sympathetically, "Yeah, we were fighting. We-"  
  
But just then Padma, dragging another Ravenclaw fellow behind her, caught sight of her twin sister and ran over to her, "Parvati! Did you hear? Did you see?" Padma glanced inside the bar, absorbing the people standing around her sister, "Oooh, there they are!" She exclaimed, pointing at Ron and Harry. Ron groaned.  
  
Padma turned to her sister excitedly, "You know the line to get a picture outside? Well, his sister," she jerked her head at Ron, "Was standing with one of the boys in your house and Ron here got upset and yelled at the guy. So his little sister goes up and punches him in the face!"  
  
Rosmerta hoots delightedly and goes off to get a bag of ice.   
  
After collecting the ice, Harry herded his friend away from the bar and the gossips and decided to go to Zonko's to restock; Ron seemed bent on following his older brothers' footsteps as pranksters. Inside, there didn't appear to be many people shopping at the moment, but a short brunette with a pigtail caught the boys' eyes. Ron quickly bridged the gap between them and grabbed Circe's arm roughly and swung her around. His eyes met fawn-colored, scared, innocent eyes, the eyes of a doe before she is shot, and those eyes gawked at him, terrified, until the limp lips hastily pursed and widened into an impudent smirk. The painted lids, decorated with lavender eyeliner and mascara, lowered coyly and her upturned face glared at him sweetly while she tore her arm from his grasp.   
  
"What the hell did you do to your hair!" Ron gingerly fingered the tip of her wet-looking chestnut brown ponytail.  
  
"I dyed it, stupid," was the curt reply.  
  
Harry joined the pair and eyed Circe curiously, "What are you doing here? I thought you were only coming to Hogsmeade to check up on your time."  
  
Circe batted the air lazily, as if the idea were a tangible thing that could be swatted aside, "I'll get to that later, in case the Headmaster Sergeant wants me back immediately. Don't you think I could have left Hogwarts before and contacted her? It's not that long a walk from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade."  
  
"Well, why haven't you?"  
  
"To have some fun, of course. I figured that since I was here I'd find out what Zonko's has to offer before the twins get really big. In my time, all the major stuff carries the Weasley logo."  
  
Ron grinned, "That's great! I always knew they'd make it big. What kind of stuff do they come out with?"  
  
"Well, they gave my a complete set of hair products on the house, so I just sampled a few in the prefects bathroom and the dungeons. Well, I didn't use them personally, I found other…er…victims," Circe grinned maliciously, distressing the boys slightly. Without acknowledging the change in their expressions, Circe went on, "But what those Weasleys are really good at are fake wands. I have a complete set. These wands are so much better than the…prehistoric crud they have now. You see, Fred was always sick of his mum knowing that it was a fake wand when he wouldn't test it out himself, so he put in a sample spell on the wand that you could use without a hitch. Everything else on the wand is booby-trapped. Harry, could I see your wand for a sec?"  
  
Harry clutched it warily, "Why?"  
  
Circe rolled her eyes, "Because you're an ass. But if I can't see it…it's phoenix feather core, holly, 11 inches, right?"  
  
"Yesss…"   
  
Without another word, the girl opened up the huge purse at her side and pulled out a brown leather cylinder labeled "Holly" in gold calligraphy and fished among the wands for one that matched Harry's. Smirking triumphantly, she pulled it out and handed it to Harry, who immediately took it and scrutinized the wands carefully, and finding only a single nick in the tip of the fake one as the difference.  
  
Harry handed it back thoughtfully, "What is the sample spell? Is it always the same?"  
  
"Uh-huh, yeah, right, it's always the same? What kind of idiots do you think the Weasleys are? As soon as these things got popular, everyone memorized what the sample spells were. Tarantellegra used to be the spell for holly, but now it can be changed. The owner can decide. Well, this is about the first set that came out, so it can't be changed very easily. It would take weeks to change mine successfully. When I left they were working on a prototype that could change sample spells in an hour."  
  
"…What kind of relationship do you have with my brothers? I mean, you're a Malfoy and all," Ron rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably.   
  
Circe smirked in an elusive reply and turned to face Harry, "Anything else you'd like to know about these things?"   
  
"What happens when you use a spell besides the sample spell? I mean, is it different from now?"  
  
"That depends," she mumbled, and put the wands away. "Most wands just do a tickling charm or transfigure into a frog or something, but when these wands get onto the black market, they could do anything from turning you into a rat to the killing curse."  
  
Ron felt confused by her suddenly disdainful attitude, her snapped and mirthless words, so he gently rubbed her shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting manner. His hand dropped when the girl stiffened involuntarily and began to tremble, confusing, even alarming Ron. She smiled weakly at him, apologizing to the boys as she turned and fled the shop abruptly.  
  
Circe made her way impatiently through the streets of Hogsmeade, unwilling to stay among these crowds, so she beelined to the shrieking shack, around which she and Bixby had often played. Bixby…Ron and Harry seemed repulsed by her surname, but Bixby had never held it against her. Much the opposite, he had either forgotten, or when he did remember he seemed to think of himself as her defender from her family. She appreciated the gesture, but if he really knew what went on in the Malfoy household, he'd make sure she'd never have to go home again. Bixby…great wizards how she suddenly wanted to get back to her own time.  
  
She reached the shrieking shack and promptly began looking around for the tree she and Bixby had often used to climb to the shack's roof. Walking around to the spot, she found the silver birch, but in this time it was closer to a sapling than the full-fledged tree she remembered. The bottom branches proved sturdy as the girl clumsily ascended, encumbered by her purse, but higher up the thin, leaf covered branches could barely support her weight. She resented the urge for such a familiar haunt, but her jaw jutted contrarily and she stubbornly prepared herself for the leap, no matter how flippant the whim.   
  
After heaving her purse to the roof, Circe took a deep breath, a crouching position, a running leap, and lastly amassed a painful collection of scrapes from the unforgiving shingles. Standing up shakily, Circe grinned to herself and sat down, her back supported by a gable. Her hands fished out the little computer notebook, flipped it open, and hit the appropriate buttons with practiced ease. All that left her to do was to stare at the screen until it all loaded.  
  
The girl held her breath as the rectangle sitting on her lap began to crackle and lighten, and at last begin to separate into colors, shapes, and at last facial features. The face that stared back at her frowned at the sight of her and immediately turned away yelling something that sounded oddly like Lord Demetri, but that had to be wrong because the only person named Demetri at the school had been put in Azkaban that summer.  
  
"Who is it?" a smooth voice barked, causing Circe's heart to freeze and her head to spin. She knew that voice, how could she not when it's owner, Demetri Maury, had wrapped her in his coils and isolated her from all but the dark arts and himself. Suppressed scenes blinded her; Bixby trying to break his hold on her, Demetri almost killing Bixby in a wizard's dual, Demetri trying to use her as a hostage to force Father back into the dark arts, and at last the suave, silver tongued college student being arrested. Yet anger saved her composure as it twisted her mouth into an anticipating smirk and her eyes into the narrowed shape of arrowheads.   
  
A moment after he first spoke, her ex-boyfriend slid into view and Circe noted smugly the tired rings under his eyes, the sunken cheeks, and the cuts on his chin and cheeks from a badly used razor. Probably understandable if facial hair had completely taken over his face in Azkaban, but she took delight in the knowledge and the edge it gave her. "Who in the name of sages are you?" he snapped, after trying to identify her for a minute.   
  
The brunette arched an eyebrow, "Your stay in Azkaban must have addled your wits if you don't remember me, "Lord" Demetri."  
  
His eyes darkened, but still his tongue only stuttered and babbled, so the girl removed her contact lenses and then winked at him. Tawny brown eyes bulged, enraged, at her silvery irises. At last he opened his mouth to intelligently enter the cold, calculatingly polite game of the age-old conversation, "Circe Malfoy, of course I remember you! How could I forget? Betrayal is fairly difficult to forget, my dear."  
  
Anger seeped into his voice, breaking rule number one, as emotion made one vulnerable. The only sentiment safe to let through was planned sarcasm and condescension, and they both knew it. "You're losing you're touch. Now, be a dear and tell me why in the name of wizardry Azkaban let such a desirable guest leave and why you're in this particular time."  
  
"Azkaban has no control over my comings and goings, my dear. And if you haven't figured out the reasons by now, then you, not me, are losing more than just your touch."  
  
"And you're losing everything if you can't even hold a razor steady," she replied calmly.   
  
Demetri ran his fingers through his vanilla and chocolate curls, the result of a popular fashion trend of bleaching, and Circe cheered inside when she recognized his discreet acknowledgment of discomfort, although he probably didn't realize that he had such a habit.  
  
"Let me explain it to you, Malfoy," he said at last, "Things are going to change. Lord Greythorne is going to do the dark arts a big favor by letting them keep the lord of this generation while disposing of your precious Potter boy. Granger will probably have to be disposed of then, taking your beloved time college with her, and Weasley can then be converted, giving us a very favorable potential Minister of Magic. And there's nothing you can do about it."  
  
"Don't bet on it," she examined her finger nails, relieved to be able to break the eye contact, "None of this is over until the Dark Lord croaks. And, as you very well know about the future, nothing is written in stone and even then stone can be broken," the girl forced herself to yawn in contempt  
  
"Malfoy, don't throw empty proverbs at me, I know that you excel at the academics. But for all that bookwork, it doesn't say anything for your skill at the practical."  
  
"And your grasp of the academics is about the equivalent of one plus three equals four. Don't scorn that of which you have no comprehension. And as to my skill, you can expect to be shown a sample of what I can do," she menaced casually.  
  
Panic threatened to bubble over when the warning had aroused only a feral, anticipating smile, and so her thumb instantly slammed into the off button, yet while the screen blanked immediately his last words, "I can't wait," lingered in her mind ominously. Shaking, her hands put the computer notebook away before her mind could react emotionally at all. And when it did, terror clamped over her brain in cold chills and blocked all rational thought.  
  
In a hysterical attempt to escape whatever panic he had left in her head, she stood up and tried to escape physically from the place, springing onto the tree out of habit. But the young limb snapped, dropping her like a stone onto the pebbly ground, and twisting her ankle in a few tree roots.  
  
"Dammit!" the girl yanked her foot out and pulled out her wand. Carefully picturing her broom, she muttered, "Accio."  
  
Nothing happened. "ACCIO!"   
  
Swearing vividly, Circe stormed, or limped rather, painfully away from the village to Hogwarts.  
  
***  
  
Hermione chewed absently on the end of her thick brown braid as she browsed through the dusty volume in the otherwise empty library. The types of magical insects in the world had amazing variety, so to augment her studies Hermione decided to research a few. So far her notes didn't number very much:   
  
"The most beautiful was a furred butterfly, Lepidoptera Pyrexia, whose entire body seemed to be covered with crushed velvet, with a wingspan of five feet and wings like a sunset. The common names for this insect are Psyche's Petals, Iris's Gifts, and Starfire. Native to Greece, this butterfly migrates every year to the banks of the Amazon River in South America to lay eggs. In Greece, it is poached for its wings to make clothing and drapery. In South America its eggs have occasionally been consumed by indigenous Muggles as a hallucinogen drug. However, as the eggs are laid exclusively on mushrooms in the area, the drug has been connected to the mushroom rather than the eggs.   
  
The rarest and most difficult to find was the beaded damselfly, Diptera Nacre, as it had a life-span of three centuries and it hibernated for 270 of those 300 years. What made it interesting was that the older it got, the more emeralds, rubies, amethysts, etc. embedded themselves in it's body, making it an idealistic dream for poachers.   
  
Technically not a lethal insect, the most troublesome beetle to witches and wizards at least, is a similar to a ladybug in shape and proportions. This beetle, categorized Coleoptera Serebro and commonly called an Acid Beetle, has a silver outer set of wings, used purely for protection. Native to southern Germany, it comes out at winter where it can use its wings as camouflage against the snow. The danger comes in when magic is used, as the beetle is attracted to the usage of magic and bites the witch or wizard who has the most magic about him or her. The venom that the beetle secretes is acidic, and when in the bloodstream of witch or wizard, corrodes any and all magic near him or her in a painful, burning process. Although the venom is not poisonous, its effects have driven many to suicide because of the inability to touch magic."   
  
Absorbed in her studies as Hermione was, even she could not avoid noticing the rush of air as an invisible something swept into the library and stopped in front of one of the shelves. Several books floated off the shelves and disappeared, swallowed up into what Hermione recognized to be the invisibility cloak. The invisible someone plopped down at the table opposite Hermione without seeming to know that anyone outside of the cloak existed. A pile of books manifested on the table and then disembodied hands took the top one and laid it open on the table, the fingers skimming through it.  
  
The brunette shut the tome she had been glancing at and stood about a little more than foot away from where she knew whoever was in the cloak had to be. "Need any help, Harry?"  
  
The hands stopped cold, then went on tracing words down the page and then turning to a new page, as voice, female, replied dryly, "Do these hand's look like Harry's, or does he usually get a manicure at Hogwarts that the history books didn't care to mention?"  
  
"Malfoy."  
  
One of the hands rose and took off the hood, then undid the clasp and let the cloak slide down between Circe's now-visible body and the back of the chair. "Brilliant deduction, Granger. Now shove off and let me try to find a way to save your boyfriend."  
  
Hermione shifted her weight, spreading her legs slightly and then she put her fists on her hips, arms akimbo, "Wh-what did you just say? I don't have a boyfriend!"  
  
"Well then you pop the question first, babe, cause Harry's not gonna do it for you, if he hasn't gotten it over with already," Circe popped her gum complacently.  
  
"Harry is-what did you mean by finding a way to save him?"  
  
"Exactly what I said, brainiac. In my time, Harry is dead, killed in, oh…what's today's date?"  
  
"The 10th of October…but-"  
  
"Harry dies is a little more than 5 months. At least, that's how it is in my time. I wasn't planning on changing it, but some idiots from my time, and one idiot in particular, I'd know, I used to date him, have barged in and plan on killing your boyfriend, you, converting Ron, and keeping Voldy alive, or something along those lines. What I do know is that somehow they're barricading this time period and I cant get out until they let me out, and that's never gonna happen. So I need to find a way to end it all."  
  
"You mean that you knew Harry was going to die and you didn't tell us!?"  
  
"I wasn't planning the past, you would have done the same thing. Trust me on that one. Anyway, I plan to change the past now, so I'm telling you. Happy?"   
  
Hermione grumbled a bit, but practicality overruled selfish sulking, "Um…what do you have in mind? What are the options?"  
  
Circe snapped her gum again, "There's suicide."  
  
"Suicide? But you shouldn't-"  
  
"Shouldn't what? That's the attitude that tips many people over the edge. But I was just naming an option. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?" Circe smirked.  
  
Rolling her eyes at the girl's flippant attitude, Hermione looked down at the book, "So…Malfoy, what are you trying to look up?" She tipped the front cover off the table and peer through the shadows at the title. "Why would you want this? 'Recent Persecutors of the Dark Arts'? What will that do?"  
  
Circe scowled, "I've been trying to look for aurors that I could find and bring here, but this stupid book hasn't been updated in like 20 years."  
  
The other girl rolled her eyes, "Next time try asking. Harry might know, but I know that Sirius would. I mean he's practically an auror himself. And then the professors would surely know, especially Dumbledore and Snape."  
  
Gray eyes stared into the distance, "I don't like depending on others or asking things from others. I don't have any use for anyone but myself."  
  
"You really are a bitch, do you know that?"  
  
"Yeah, so?"   
  
"Nevermind," Hermione dug a pad of paper from her book bag; muggle paper could be much more convenient than wizard scrolls. Ripping off the top page, she took a quill and wrote in her precise, tiny script "Things to do" on the top of the fresh page. As the seventh year made neat, delicate bullets, Circe marveled at how little that Hermione's handwriting would change over the decades until she would become her college professor. Hermione began a list starting with the word aurors, and then looked up, pen poised, and asked, "Anything else?"  
  
"I um…Demetri said something about a Greythorne character…I guess he or she would be born by now… it might be worth looking into."  
  
Hermione jotted down the Greythorne bit, then asked, "Did you know that you would be coming to this year? I mean, did you know this Greythorne thing would happen?"  
  
"No, it was only supposed to be an ordinary exam. There was no warning whatsoever…oh no…maybe…it can't…but if it is I'm going to scream."  
  
"What?"  
  
Circe laughed, "My horoscope. I just read it for fun…now it's all coming back word for word. That's how creepy it is, and I didn't even want to memorize it!"  
  
"Well, how does it go?"  
  
"Very soon you will be pressed for time by an unexpected and unpredictable event. You will relive dead memories from before your birth and force others to revive them, but the doors will shut and lock behind you, leaving only one way out. The path will be virulent and lethal, and you may need another face to achieve your ends. A Leo will thank you, a Pisces will love you, a Scorpio will hate you, and beware the stony fang. And that's it. And it's right, at least most of it."  
  
Hermione sighed with contempt, "And how is that?"  
  
"Oh yes, the skeptic, I know how you act grown-up. You give Tiglah such a hard time because of her mother. Not that I'm complaining; Tiglah's a self-centered bitch. You know, her mother was at Bix's party…do you know a Lavender Kurt?"  
  
"Kurt? The only Lavender I know is Lavender Brown, and she is the worst gossip in the school, next to the Patils."  
  
"Brown? Oh, of course, Kurt is her married name. Brown would be her maiden name."  
  
"And what would Lavender have to do with this?"  
  
"She wrote the bloody thing!"  
  
"Well excuse me! But I wouldn't advise talking to her about it. First off, I've already said she's the worst gossip in the school and she is. Second, she hasn't even written it yet!"  
  
"Whatever, but I-" she began, but stopped when the boys trooped into the library. Harry grinned at Hermione and the girl only stopped beaming back when she saw Circe winking lewdly at her.   
  
Ron raised an eyebrow, wincing as it disturbed his now very colorful eye, "You two working together? Has Hell frozen over? Who's helping with whose homework?"  
  
Hermione rushed over to him, "Ha, ha, very funny, now what happened to your eye?"  
  
Harry snickered, "Ginny popped him a good one when he tried to tell her who's boss."  
  
Circe grinned, "I always said I admired Ginny Weasley!"  
  
Ron glared at her reclining figure and started to advance, when Madame Pince came into view and tut-tutted a warning. The redhead straightened and retreated, "I'm going to the old transfiguration room, we can talk there? You guys coming?"  
  
Harry nodded, and Ron stormed out of the library. Circe watched him go, and then eased onto her feet, wincing every time she had to move her right leg. Harry looked concerned, "What'd you do?"  
  
"I jumped off the roof. I purposely broke my ankle! This just happened, okay?"  
  
"No need to get upset, can we get a look at it?" Harry started moving closer.  
  
Still grumbling, Circe lifted her foot onto the chair and pulled up her robes and pant leg. Hermione hissed sympathetically when she saw it; the only thing keeping the ankle from swelling to the size of a grapefruit was her black leather boot, and the seams were already straining. Circe put her leg down and tossed Hermione the little notebook, "You guys go on, I'll follow at my own pace. Better not keep the hothead waiting."  
  
Harry shrugged and left. Hermione ignored an encouraging wink from Circe and followed. Out in the hall, Harry glanced down at the notebook, "What were you and Circe working on? Was she not able to go home?"  
  
"Well…pretty much. There are some…complications…Harry, I don't want to talk about it right now."  
  
Harry stopped and stared her down, "What can you talk about with Malfoy but not with me?"  
  
"She came to the library and I was in the library, I asked if I could help, and it's her problem not mine. It-"  
  
"It has something to do with me, doesn't it," Harry finished for her, stating the obvious.  
  
"Harry-"  
  
"I know you too well. What is it?"  
  
"You're not going to die!"  
  
He looked at her in surprise, then nodded, "Of course not. At least not for a few years, I hope.  
  
"Harry, you don't get it. Malfoy said-"  
  
Before she could get any further a grating voice called out from an open doorway to their left, "Potter! Granger! You're wanted in here!"  
  
Hermione automatically started backing up, but the man, whom neither Hermione nor Harry recognized, was agitatedly tapping a wand against his chocolate brown palm and neither of the students had their wands drawn. A very pale Dean Thomas peeked out from inside the room, and the man barked at him to get back in the room. Cautiously Harry steered Hermione into the room, very much aware of that wand slapping against the man's palm again, and again, and again, and again. As soon as they were fully inside the room, the man blocked the doorway behind them and slammed the door loudly.   
  
Ron leaned against one of the desks, toying brusquely with his wand, until the uneven rhythm of limping footsteps echoed in the hall. By the time he had stoop up to help whoever it was, Circe had already entered, shrugged off the cloak and was turning to close the door.  
  
"Stop, don't close it!" he exclaimed anxiously.  
  
"Why, claustrophobic? I admit, this room might seem claustrophobic to a big ox like you."  
  
"Stupid! That door locks automatically and it can only be opened from the outside!"  
  
"That's what the Alohomora spell is for, dimwit."  
  
"Well, excuse me, wiseass, but these rooms used to be used for detentions, where the teacher would leave the student in here for hours, and even with a wand they couldn't get out. Know why? Because this room has a magical seal!"  
  
"So I'm a wiseass? At least I'm wise. You're just an ass," but Circe left the door carefully ajar anyway and looked around the room, "Why aren't Harry and Hermione here?"  
  
"I was about to ask you the same question."  
  
"You mean they haven't come? You haven't seen them? If Demetri has-"  
  
Click.  
  
Both teens stopped the argument at the sound of the door shutting and the deadbolt sliding into place. Circe rammed herself into the door, forgetting the pain in her ankle. Ron on the other hand glared at the poltergeist in the garish purple turban, "PEEVES!!!" he bellowed, "UNLOCK THAT DOOR!"  
  
"Are ikkle students trapped? Tee-hee lookee at the big and brave loudmouth!" the phantom cackled in a whiny nasal voice.   
  
"PEEVES!!!"  
  
"Hee! Big bad seventh year wants out! I'll let you cool off, yes I will! Ta-ta!" the little man stuck out his tongue and waggled his fingers behind his ears as he sunk down through the floor.   
  
But the girl didn't seem to notice the exchange; she was too busy heaving herself at the door breathlessly, chest heaving, and panting out what to Ron sounded like a slew of swears, curses and oaths, broken by occasional names.   
  
The redhead watched the girl, obviously in a hysterical state, for a few dumbfounded seconds before he lost his temper. He yelled her name a few times, followed by a few derogatory titles, but to no effect. Losing control for a few minutes he let a few long strides bring him within reach of her, then his hand lunged and clamped down around her arm like a vice and in the same motion dragged her backwards and slamming her into the wall perpendicular to the door, "What the hell do you know! Who is Demetri! What have you done to Harry and Hermione! What have you done! You little ass, WHAT IN ALL HELLS DO YOU KNOW THAT I DON'T!!!"  
  
Instinctively Ron braced himself for a fierce retaliatory tongue-lashing, and he probably deserved it too, but all the girl could did was heave empty sobs, tremble convulsively, and in spite of instability the shivers gave her, she raised her free arm over her face protectively, curling in on herself as much as she could. He thudded her shoulder into the wall again, frustrated, "ANSWER ME, MALFOY!!!"  
  
Still she held her position, not being able to speak at all between every breath that she had to labor to bring in and heave out. At last he let go, letting her body slump to the floor. He watched her for a few moments, suddenly contrite, and then dug a small bottle of water from his book bag. He knelt beside her and straightened her back to make breathing easier. Holding the bottle to her lips, he crooned, "Come on, drink up, it'll help. Easy does it, come on, get it down. There you go, slowly, don't choke, yeah, it's okay, calm down, it's all right, it's all right. I'm sorry about that, it's all right now, yeah, the water's good, just calm down."  
  
Circe swallowed, and finally got her breathing under control. Pushing the bottle away and wiping away the dribbles and spills with her sleeve, she sat up straighter staring at the opposite wall. Gradually her eyes fell on her throbbing ankle and she bent forward to examine it. Ron's eyes followed her motions and exclaimed at the way her calf muscle bulged over the top of her boot, "When did that happen?"  
  
"I fell off the shrieking shack after my little chat with Demetri," She muttered as she unlaced the boot.  
  
Her crawled in front of her and held the boot so that she could ease her foot out, "Quite a fall. And your little dance with the door sure didn't help any."  
  
"Hmph. There's more important things than a swollen ankle."  
  
"Stupid stoic. But you mean Harry and Hermione?"  
  
Circe leaned back against the wall and sighed, "Exactly. I guess… the Dark Wizards mean to kill them I think."  
  
"Them? I thought it was only Harry they wanted dead."  
  
Circe kicked him with her good leg, "In my time, Hermione invents the means to travel through time and the Dark Wizards don't want anyone but themselves to have that knowledge. If the inventor is dead before she even invents the stuff, then their work is easy."  
  
"But-are they in danger now? We have to do something-"  
  
Circe kicked again and slapped her hand on the stone floor, "Oh shut up. Hotheads like you never stop to think. Listen to me. Demetri knows time just as well as I do, and if I know anything, then the Dark Wizards won't make a move until the night when Harry originally dies. The people from my time won't involve themselves more than they have to."  
  
"When's that? Do you remember?"  
  
"How could I forget? You and your brothers hold a parade for him every year. Most of the kids my age consider it a waste of time and energy to hold such a gala thing for a dead guy, but we do a get a holiday on his death day, March 15. Don't worry, we've got a few months."  
  
"Then where's Harry and Hermione?"  
  
"Well," the girl smirked and winked eloquently, "Given that Harry is obviously smitten with her and given my teasing Hermione about it, I'm hoping that they've found corner of the castle and turned it into Smooch City."  
  
Ron snorted, "I hope so to, but I doubt it. Sometimes I think he's more scared of her than smitten."  
  
Circe sighed, thinking of her own relationship with Bixby and herself, "Sounds like someone else I know."  
  
The redhead didn't understand why she suddenly looked so depressed, but as he couldn't think of anything to say, he rested his chin on his drawn-up knee and simply watched her small, white, fidgeting hands. Seconds passed like water through a sift, quickly enough, but leaving the sift and everything else undisturbed except for the growing puddle underneath. At least he dropped a figurative stone in the figurative puddle, "Who is this Demetri fellow?"  
  
"Demetri Maury. A favorite of the Dark Wizards."  
  
"No really."  
  
"I used to date him."  
  
"Nice judgment."  
  
"I didn't have a choice. The imperious curse doesn't exactly give you one, does it?"  
  
"Must have been awful."  
  
"No, it was the best thing on Earth. Of course it was awful. Demetri's a git who is constantly trying to prove he's better than everybody else."  
  
Ron watched her hands some more, noting little white scratches from her escapade on the shrieking shack, at least that was where he assumed she got them. He bit his cheek, then asked, "Why do you hyperventilate whenever someone touches you?"  
  
Circe considered for a moment. "Well," she paused, "I once tried to explain to Bix, but he's the oldest, and he just wouldn't understand."  
  
"I've got five older brothers. If it's being the butt of everything that goes on between them, then I'm pretty sure I'll understand."  
  
"Well, yeah, that's pretty much it. Nobody but Father, Grandfather, and Cane dares to lay a hand on me, and then it's only to show me what's what, at least in their minds. Grandfather likes doing it too much, though. Well, Lazarus isn't afraid, he just prefers curses, like Mother does."  
  
"Your mum curses you?"  
  
"Who else? Father prizes Lazarus and Cane like prize pit bulls. He has no use for a rebel like me. He keeps me out of the press as much as possible; for all the world knows he has only two kids, not three."  
  
"So now you're afraid of everyone? Isn't that kind of dumb?"  
  
"Since no one except my family ever bothers to touch me, I don't think so."  
  
Ron squirmed and then sat back on his heels thoughtfully, unfortunately not coming up with a reply.   
  
This time it was Circe who broke the silence, "Where did you learn to calm someone down like that?"  
  
"The twins used to torment Ginny endlessly. More times than I can count she would cry and then not be able to stop. She wouldn't tell mum, so I had to help her. Fred and George never had that sort of problem with me, so I had to deal with her." Ron shrugged and glanced out the window behind Circe. "Looks like it's going to be a gorgeous sunset."  
  
"I can't see it from here."  
  
"Then move. Autumn sunsets are breathtaking."  
  
"I don't feel like getting up."  
  
"You just don't want to admit that your ankle hurts."  
  
"It doesn't."  
  
"Liar."  
  
"Name-caller."  
  
"Is your ankle the reason that you're not moving?"  
  
"What if it is?"  
  
Not answering, Ron grunted to his feet and bent over her, hands poised a few inches from her back and knees, "Do you trust me?"  
  
"I trust no one," she responded calmly.  
  
"Stoic," he muttered and began to back off.   
  
Her slight hand grasped his wrist, "But I'm not afraid of you."  
  
He grinned and slipped his hands under her and the feeling of fingers creeping along the small of her back and across her hamstrings sent ambrosial chills down her spine. She sucked in her breath and held it when her body left the floor, but the ride didn't last long as Ron merely turned and deposited her on the edge of a desk, her legs dangling. The arm supporting her knees departed and she waited for the arm supporting her shoulders to follow suit, but instead it slid down to rest on her waist. She covered his hand with hers, confused, then smiled, and leaned against his torso. They watched the sunlight, first canary yellow, then ochre, orange, crimson, and ultimately magenta, play upon a fiery carpet of yellowing leaves. The grand finale, the agonizingly vivid disk disappearing completely beneath the horizon and luring all daylight down after it, left the pair feeling strangely bereft, wanting and unsatisfied. They remained that way, until the only light in the room came whimsically from the flickering stars outside and showing inside only vague, generally blue silhouettes.   
  
Circe heaved a sigh into the onerous silence, then stiffened as Ron's arm slithered out from behind her. She relaxed a little when she realized that the movement had been only him shifting so that he stood in front of her, facing her. When he didn't move any more, she stroked his cheek tentatively, feeling a slight stubble even so young…Bixby never liked to shave much either. She could see some light reflecting off his eyes, though she couldn't figure out where from, but she could see her convex reflection in those golden black irises. Then her reflection came closer, the pale-lashed lids lowered over the inky pupils, and his lips pressed against hers, timidly; she responded in kind, not restrained by any uncertainty that held him back. Her fingers rushing forward through his hair, in her thumb she could feel the sudden jump of his pulse in his temple, and she could feel him stepping, moving forward, coming closer… Bixby…she had wanted to do this with Bixby…never had…Ron….  
  
  



	11. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Eleven

AN and Disclaimer:   
Gryffith: Which chapter is this?   
Cloe: Um Chapter 11?   
Gryffith: Oh yeah. I liked writing this one.   
Cloe: Heh heh I'm not exactly sure if it is Chapter 11 but close enough.   
Gryffith: It is.   
Gryffith: Trust me.   
Cloe: Sorry we left you hanging there on the last one, didn't mean to. Well we did but oh well.   
Gryffith: I didn't.   
Gryffith: I don't think.   
Gryffith: ~grins~ I really liked writing this one...   
Cloe: ::rolls eyes:: Yeah I know you did.   
Gryffith: :P   
Gryffith: BTW this thing is probably going to have around 20, 21 chapters.   
Gryffith: And any chars that don't belong to us, don't belong to us.   
Gryffith: Circe does, so nyah.   
Cloe: Circe is mine. All mine. Mwahahaha.   
Gryffith: Yes, to evil Cloe.   
Cloe: ::looks smug::   
Cloe: Read Black Hole Sun, if you like H/D slash. (there Lin does this make up for me flaming you without reading the story?)   
Gryffith: Probably not, knowing Lin.   
Gryffith: Anything else for the AN?   
Cloe: Uh...guess not.   
Gryffith: Okay. Enjoy the ficcie.   
Cloe: And for the love of god and donuts, review.   
  
  
***************  
Guardian Angel from Hell  
Chapter Eleven, Introduction to the Title   
  
A Harry Potter Fanfiction  
By Gryffith and Cloe  
***************  
  
Chapter Eleven  
  
"That was a complete waste of time!" Hermione fumed as she stormed out of the Defense against the Dark Arts classroom.  
  
"Hope Dean gets out of there alive."  
  
"It's his own fault. Mr. Thomas has the right to be furious."  
  
"Mr. Thomas is his father, so I guess so. But don't you think it's cricket that Mr. Thomas recognized us from Dean's sketches?"  
  
"Not when he gets us into trouble by drawing them on the backs of playwizard magazines!" she snapped.  
  
Harry shrugged and looked at his watch, "Well, you are right about a waste of time. Dinner must be starting soon and Ron may be worried about us. And if Circe is still with him they must be biting each other's head off."  
  
"I'd bet that it would get physical. If they do, five galleons that Circe throws the first punch."  
  
"You're on. But if we aren't able to see it, five galleons that Ron's on top."  
  
"Harry, Ron doesn't know what he's getting in to with her. She's…like…I don't know… a cyclone that passes through and destroys or at least mauls everything in her wake."  
  
Harry grinned, "Poetic. Let me see if I can match it…I think she's a fallen angel. Born amidst the fiery regions of hell, spawned from stupidity incarnate himself, Draco Malfoy!"  
  
"Impressive," Hermione praised absently, and considered Harry thoughtfully. "Sometimes I think she's more like a guardian angel from hell," she murmured under her breath.   
  
Harry must have heard her voice, if not her words, and turned to regard her curiously, "Why are you looking at me like that?"  
  
"Oh…how am I looking at you?"  
  
"As if I'm going to disappear in a few minutes and you'll never see me again. As if you're trying to figure me inside and out, memorize everything about me."  
  
She bit her lip, realizing it probably was true…but she couldn't tell him about what Circe knew about the future, his own death. It just wasn't right. But, Circe had said other things in the library, and even though Hermione had told herself to ignore and forget them, they kept niggling at the back of her mind. Still, it couldn't work…she couldn't…or could she? "Not quite, Harry" Hermione lied. "Circe kept calling you my boyfriend. I was wondering if there was anything behind that."  
  
"No, I-no…" Harry held though note as though he wanted to continue, but then he dropped the vowel, trailing off.  
  
"I also…wondered if you wanted there to be something…" Hermione stopped dead in her tracks, flabbergasted that she had blurted out such a thing. Such words were only asking for trouble, weren't they? But then there were Harry's eyes, so big, so round, so…blatantly hopeful! She hesitated, and opened her mouth to speak when the dinner gong blared through the air. The unexpected noise shocked through Hermione, causing her to drop the books she was carrying. Before Harry could do or say a thing, she had bent, gathered them up, straightened up, and started walking towards the Great Hall. "Come on, Harry, you know Ron never misses a meal. He'll be waiting for us."  
  
Harry followed her down the halls desolately as she mercilessly chattered about Ron, Circe, classes, grades, homework, how they mustn't be late, and then around the cycle again. Harry set his mouth firmly until they found a place at the Gryffindor table. Across the table sat the Creevey brothers, and Harry noticed that Colin once again had a handheld camera hanging from his neck.  
  
"So, you found your camera?" Harry asked, trying to start a conversation that didn't have to do with Circe.  
  
Colin looked up, startled, and hen smiled widely, "Yeah, thanks. I found it on my bedside table this morning. There were some negatives in here, so I developed them."  
  
The sixth year pulled out a rectangular paper packet and fingers the manila flap gingerly, "These are the pictures, but I find them rather disturbing-"  
  
"Oh shod it, Col!" Dennis snatched the packet from his brother's hands and handed it over the table to Harry, "These pictures are the funniest things I've ever seen in my life!"  
  
Harry took the packet and laid it on the table between him and Hermione, who smiled at the courtesy and took out the pictures. Immediately she burst out giggling and, turning bright red in her efforts to hold them back in, showed them to Harry, and he whooped delightedly. Ginny, just now entering the Great Hall, stopped over to see what the joke was. Bending over Harry's shoulder, she looked at him, Hermione, and the Creeveys, "What's so funny, guys?" Then she caught a glimpse of the pictures jiggling in Hermione's shaking hand. She grabbed them, thumbed through them, and saw several pictures of the Snape/boggart in the striptease costume jumping up and down and then tripping on the French heels and then more photos of Snape throughout the makeover from afro to Mohawk. She clapped her hand over her mouth and hooted. Once she had regained her composure, or at least some of it, she handed them back to Hermione and snorted, "Oh. My. God. Who took these?"  
  
Colin began to shrug and admit ignorance, but Dennis knocked his brother off the bench and waved his hands modestly, "I did, but it's nothing much."  
  
"Are you kidding? These things are hilarious! I should write a column about them! Come on, tell me how all this…happened!"  
  
Dennis paled and stammered for an explanation, but Harry turned and saved him, "Dennis happened to be walking by the Defense Against he Dark Arts room and the Dungeons with Colin's camera. All he had time to do was take the pictures; he doesn't know anything."  
  
Hermione turned as well and looked up innocently. "But Harry and I would be more than glad to tell you enough information for your column, if you'll post them all over the school," she suggested sweetly. Harry snorted and Colin, who had managed to regain his seat, spat out his pumpkin juice.   
  
Ginny pulled out a notebook and elbowed her way in-between Harry and Hermione, "So, when was this?" she licked the tip of her quill and dipped it in the ink, and winked conspiratorially at Dennis, who then grinned idiotically and blushed.  
  
The seventh years gave Ginny all the information that they knew, or rather, deemed appropriate for those ignorant of Circe's existence. Then they told the redhead that Neville and Seamus probably had more to offer on the subject. Ginny nodded and turned to go, Dennis ready to follow her, when Hermione turned and grabbed her wrist, "Oh, by the way. You haven't seen Ron anywhere, have you?"  
  
Ginny started to shake her head, then hesitated, "I haven't seen him. But I think I heard him in the old transfiguration room. He and some girl, I didn't recognize her voice, were shouting at each other. The door was closed, so I supposed they didn't want to be disturbed," she snickered and strode over to the other part of the table where Seamus and Neville were seated. Harry and Hermione stood up, pushing aside their half-finished dinners and apologizing to Colin as they awkwardly disengaged themselves from the bench and hurried out of the hall.   
  
Hermione set the pace, predicting what they might find in the room, "Oh, I bet one of them is killing the other."  
  
"I still hold the bet that Ron is on top."  
  
"I'll take that bet. Circe isn't a wimp, however short she might be."  
  
Harry started to slow down, especially at the stairs. Hermione noticed and at first tried to match his pace, assuming that he was merely tired, but soon she just stopped, "What's wrong, Harry?"  
  
Dragging his feet he climbed the steps so that he was as high as she was, "You were saying something about wanting to be a couple earlier, after we were caught be Dean's father. Do you want to be? A couple?"  
  
Hermione nodded, then shook her head, unsure, "No…I mean yes…I mean, I don't know. You're…you…can you drop it for right now?"  
  
Harry nodded and led the way down the abandoned corridor, shivering slightly at all the shadows cast by the flickering torches, the only barrier against the impending night. Together the stopped outside the door, and strained to hear someone, something, anything, but stillness prevailed. Then…THUD!  
  
Grunts, indeterminate of gender, pierced the silence, even through the heavy door setting Hermione and Harry into action in hopes to save one or the other's life. Harry readied himself by the handle as Hermione pointed her wand at the lock, "Alomohora!" she cried, and Harry yanked the door open.   
  
At first they could see nothing, the gloom being too intense, yet Hermione somehow knew that no one was injured…but what was the thud from? "Lumos," she whispered.  
  
"Great Wizards! I am not seeing this, I am not seeing this!" Hermione moaned in revulsion and surprise. Harry shouldered past the door and stared down at the figures on the floor. Ron's bright red hair, glossy in Hermione's light, sprang to view first, but Harry involuntarily let his eyes roam over how Ron's body was arched over an over turned desk. The scenario that seemed most likely was that Ron must have pushed it over and fallen with is, and Harry raised an eyebrow at how his right arm held up his body like a Doric column. Meanwhile his left hand supported Circe's head, pressing it against his, or to be more specific, her lips to his. Following the contour lines of Ron's left arm, he held back a snicker when he saw that Ron's robes enveloped Circe's entire body, which was cloaked by his robes in a black tent. Except for her legs, which were resting limply on the edge of the desk to either side of Ron's waist. His mind digested this interesting assessment and then his face turned to Hermione. At first his voice box refused to work, then it cooperated minimally, cracking his voice at a high pitch, "Mione, you owe me 5 galleons."  
  
"I hardly believe that this is what you had in mind," she retorted.  
  
Ron's head snapped up as he finally realized his friends' presence, "You're alive!" he exclaimed.  
  
"Why wouldn't we be?" Harry frowned. Hermione grabbed his arm and held him still, but Circe saved her the trouble of distracting his by slapping Ron soundly, "Tactless idiot! How you ever succeed in politics I'll never know!" after saying which she shoved him off of her to the side. The momentum caused him to roll on the desk, fall on his back, sending his feet flying over the side and propelling him into a backward somersault.  
  
"I'm the idiot? You said so!"  
  
Circe rolled her eyes and, ignoring Ron, turned to Harry, "In my time you're dead. Parades and yada yada are held on your deathday. I told Ron this and he freaked out when you guys hadn't shown up."  
  
"I freaked out? You were the one who was in hysterics!"  
  
The girl sniffed, "Was not."  
  
"Oh?" Ron stumbled to his feet, "And then why were you hyperventilating? Just felt like it?"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
Hermione wrapped her arms around Harry's waist from behind and rested her chin on his shoulder, "How did you two imbeciles manage to get locked in anyway?"   
  
"Peeves," the pair condemned the poltergeist in unison, their voices rivaling each other in the degree of rancor and aggravation.  
  
Harry covered Hermione's hands with his own, not sure what she meant by the gesture. At last he gave up and quirked his eyebrows at Ron and Circe instead, "Can you two explain the amount of snogging just now?"  
  
"Um…she started it!" Ron pointed at Circe.  
  
"Nuh-uh! You kissed me first!" Circe starts dragging herself backwards so that her legs weren't leaning on the desk anymore. Carefully she lifted herself onto her feet and limped over to another, upright desk, wincing every time she put weight on her right foot. She grunted as she sat down, but gave no other outward sign of discomfort, and winked at Ron, "But you are a pretty good kisser."  
  
The redhead blushed and Harry looked confused, "That still doesn't answer the question. Why did you do it?"  
  
"We were bored," Circe replied as if stating the obvious.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and, spurred on by the irritation, interrogated the college student, "When do I die?" He stared at Circe, daring her to evade the question, and ignored Hermione suddenly tightening her hold around his waist.  
  
Circe met his eyes glare for glare, noticing how cynical his tone and expression were, "According to the history books-"  
  
"I'm in the history books?" at this piece of information Harry seemed quite stunned.  
  
Hermione squeezed his middle playfully, "Of course, dimwit. You're already in the history books!"  
  
The other girl yawned rudely. "As I was saying," she continued, "You die in about 5 months."  
  
"How would I die?" Harry queried further, like jiggling a sore tooth, however much it hurt he couldn't seem to be able to stop.  
  
"I honestly don't know. They find you and Voldie dead together in the forbidden forest, all of Voldie's followers gone. But that's really all they ever found out. They couldn't even figure out what the last spells you ever used were; the wands were dead, just like regular sticks of wood with bits of red feather poking out."  
  
Ron goggled at her, "You called him Voldie? Voldie?"  
  
"Yeah, why not?" Circe smirked. "You're not one of the people who will only call him "You-know-who," are you?"  
  
The redhead immediately started coughing. Harry chuckled, "Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who calls Voldemort by that name, aside from Dumbledore. But Voldie, now that name is rich."  
  
Hermione blew softly on his neck, "Is that why you aren't freaked out? I mean, in her time you're dead-"  
  
Harry sighed, "I've had my death predicted since the day we learned that Voldemort was still alive. I mean, what's one more?"  
  
Circe rolled her eyes yet again, "What pretentious jerks. No one's death can possibly be predicted like that. You should know that, Hermione. I mean, in my time, I am so very sick of hearing you quote, "Nothing is written in stone, and even then stone can be broken. The future is always in motion, no matter what future it is." I mean, it's true and all, but you'd think that you'd have it memorized already. Even if it hasn't been said yet."  
  
Hermione groaned faintly, "Am I really that bad?"  
  
"Uh-huh, very," Ron grinned.  
  
Harry cleared his throat, hesitated, cleared it again, and then stared straight at Circe, "Do you think that there's any chance of changing what you know in your time?"  
  
Circe gave a fake gasp, "So the famous Harry Potter really does believe in prophesies!"  
  
"It's not a prophecy! It's from the future!" Harry protested stiffly.  
  
"Nuh-uh, Harry. Wrong," she laughed quietly to herself. "Don't you understand the quote? The future is always in motion. There is no "the" future. There is a possible future. There is a potential for a certain future. But nothing is set. From here, I have no idea what will happen in the next 20 years, even though I lived through most of them. But the key word in there is "from here." Things do or don't happen. If Father gets his way and doesn't let Grandfather marry him off to Sylvia the slut from Durmstrang, then I probably won't be born at all. But that's where it gets confusing. Of course, things usually do happen the way they are remembered from the future. Unless they are changed, there is no reason to think you will live to graduate from Hogwarts."  
  
Harry positively had the breath knocked out of him upon hearing that statement, not only from his own shock, but also from Hermione impulsively squeezing his middle as if her arms alone could hold him together. Once he could breathe again, he tested the verdict tentatively, "So, there is no hope-"  
  
Circe cackled and then carried on in a singsong voice, "I didn't say that. I did not say that! Listen carefully, all of you. Unless they are changed, there is no reason to think that things will be different. That's the same as saying, if things are changed then it will turn out different. And things are already being changed. I'm here. And…and Demetri and the Greythorne fellow are here."  
  
"What do you mean that?" Ron asked, worried by her solemn attitude at the end.   
  
"I mean," Circe scoffed at herself bitterly, "Harry is probably going to die anyway. The only reason that I'm here is that they're here. And the only reason they're here is to try to kill Harry while keeping Voldemort alive."  
  
"Are you all right?" Ron started moving her way apprehensively.  
  
"I'm fine!" she insisted tersely.   
  
Ron settled back down reluctantly. "Yeah, and I'm a grindylow's sister," he muttered sarcastically.  
  
"I…" Circe twisted and stared out at the Forbidden forest, leaving the potential for a response hanging in the hair. None of the other three felt like interrupting her, even though Harry got increasing uncomfortable with Hermione holding him as if she believed that when she let go he would disappear. And, he thought derisively to himself, why couldn't he hug her back? At length the girl twisted back around, her eyes etched with a rebelliously grim countenance, albeit her tone regained its normal petulant timbre, "I'm starving, how long ago was dinner?"  
  
Before anyone could say a thing, she had hopped down from the desk and collapsed with a sharp cry. Ron and Hermione, quickly disentangling herself from Harry, swooped down to her and pulled out her ankle to examine it.  
  
Circe tried to resist, "Stop! I'm just out of practice. I would normally be able to walk on this."  
  
"You mean that your father and brothers would normally "toughen you up" by breaking your ankle any old time they felt like it," Ron corrected with revulsion dripping from his voice. Then his tone picked up and turned vehemently vindictive, "I am going to seriously maim, then curse, and then kill Draco for this."  
  
"Quit being such an asinine hothead!" Circe snapped.  
  
"Then quit being such a jackass stoic! You're attitude is the most hypocritical thing I've ever heard!"  
  
"Hothead!"  
  
"Stoic!"  
  
"Asinine!"  
  
"Arse!"  
  
"Stop it!" Hermione snapped her fingers in front of their faces.  
  
Circe, drawn and pale, swatted the hand away. Ron peered at her, anger drained and concern replacing it, "Are you all right? Does it hurt?"  
  
"Unless you count shooting throbbing pain as "hurting," no, I've never been better," Circe crossed her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes. "Now, if you have nothing more intelligent to say, then I'll be getting up and getting something to eat. Herm, you were saying that some of the teachers might have lists of aurors?"  
  
Hermione shook her head, "You're not going anywhere on that ankle. I'm pretty sure it's broken. Pomfrey will be able to fix it."  
  
Circe pumped her head back and forth negatively and started pushing herself onto her feet with her hands, "No way! Not a chance! I can't let Pomfrey near me! Then the whole school will know about me!"  
  
Ron pushed her back down to the floor, his hands gripping her shoulders firmly, "I see your point about Pomfrey, but there is no way I'm gonna let you walk on that ankle! Hermione, what the hell…?"  
  
For the other girl had just doused her light. In the confusion she pointed her wand at Circe, "Stupefy. Ron, do you have her?"  
  
"Yeah, what the hell did you just do!"   
  
"Lumos," and Hermione's wand flickered back to life. "She's knocked out, so she won't struggle. I'm gonna try to fix her ankle."  
  
"Are you sure about that, Mione?" Harry asked, still in the doorway.   
  
She shrugged, "I know enough. Now, Harry, can you light the room?"  
  
Without delay the room glowed, ringed by little hovering orbs that emitted a faint blue light. Hermione smiled briefly, then bent over the ankle in question, wand in hand, and concentrated and muttered incantations for much of an hour. Ron crouched at the other end of Circe's body, cradling her head, and at Hermione's request used the Stupefy spell whenever Circe looked like she was coming around.  
  
At last Hermione straightened and heaved a huge, relieved sigh, "Done. It's not perfect, but if she actually takes care of it and doesn't walk on it, it will be all right in a few days, at most a week. Now all we have to do is get her down to the kitchens.  
  
Needing no more prompting, Ron stood up and maneuvered Circe around him so that he and she were more in a piggyback position. His arms held her legs while her head lolled senselessly on his shoulder. Hermione got the impression that he liked having to be depended on by someone more helpless than he was. When he hung out with Harry and herself, it was almost always the other way around. Together they walked down out of the wing, and Hermione was touched by how tenderly Ron carried his burden, always aware of her, especially when she groggily regained consciousness. She guessed that Harry noticed it as well when he took to walking right next to her. Shrugging, she let herself lean against him as they walked, honestly tired from having concentrated so hard, and honestly gratified by the arm and Harry rested on her shoulders.  
  
Ron gained the kitchens first and gently laid Circe in her makeshift bed, kissed her on the forehead, and left. Having watched from the entryway, Harry and Hermione then followed him up to the Gryffindor common room, parted in the corridor up to the dormitories, the boys up to the boys' dorms and Hermione up to the girls'.  
  
The next morning, the trio let themselves sleep in, so they got to breakfast relatively late. When they did reach the Great Hall, they found it in an uproar; amidst all the rumors breeding and spreading in the hall, like amoebas Hermione decided, the things that everyone agreed to have happened was that the teachers' offices had all been broken into and ransacked. General consensus condemned the anonymous, to them at least, prankster, but Hermione reassured Ron with the knowledge that the break in took place at midnight, at least the majority of the students said so, and Circe would have been too groggy to think, if not out cold. Of course several Ravenclaws maintained that the break ins occurred at sunrise, but Harry, clued in by Hermione, took care to steer Ron away from them. Regardless, the redhead felt he needed to go check on Circe, and at first Hermione wanted to refuse, but he went anyway.  
  
After a half-hour or so of waiting for a teacher to lay to rest the flood of wild speculations, Harry went to the owlery to brief Sirius on the recent events by way of Hedwig. Ironically, 5 minutes after Harry left, Professor McGonagall appeared on the scene and addressed the crowd, "Quit spreading gossip! We don't know who the perpetrator, is or if there is more than one. Either way, he, she, or they will be caught shortly. The intruder, or intruders as the case may be, have gone through all of our files and has taken some rare and potentially dangerous items. If anyone has any suspicions, please report them to the head of your house."  
  
Snape walked up to stand beside McGonagall, cleared his throat, and added, "This intruder has also seen all of the student files, so it may be within you best interest to have him or her apprehended before it is too late."  
  
Immediately the volume in the hall rose from a quiet hum to a raucous buzz. Hermione rolled her eyes at Snape's tactics, but admitted to herself that they were nonetheless effective tactics. In the midst of the crowd's reaction, both boys fought their way through frantic masses back to Hermione, Harry looking a little concerned and vaguely amused, Ron looking worried and disconsolate.  
  
Harry gave his report first, "I couldn't find Hedwig. She must be out hunting or something, but I'll never know what possessed her to go out into the snow."  
  
Hermione shivered and glanced up at the ceiling, which hadn't recovered from Circe's weather working yet, "Ugh, snow this early? No, Harry, I'm fine," Hermione shrugged him away as she would brush away a fly. To distract herself she looked to Ron, "Are you all right? What's wrong?"  
  
"Circe," he croaked hoarsely, "I can't find her anywhere. Her broom's gone and the invisibility cloak isn't where we left it last night…I think she took it with her, wherever she is."  
  
Harry frowned at him, "You can't think…?"  
  
Obviously he did, from the hurt, betrayed look in his eyes. Hermione slipped a friendly arm around his waist-for a moment Harry envied his friend that touch before banishing it from his thoughts-and looked up at him with sympathetically, "Are you okay?"  
  
The redhead shook his head, but whether it was a negative answer or a denial of their concern neither of his friends could tell. Irksomely Ron disengaged her arm; "I'm fine, it's just that the moral of the story is never trust a Malfoy, which I did."  
  
Ron turned to leave, but Filch stood in his way with a triumphant gleam in his eyes that worried all three of them.  
  
"Well, well, well, isn't it the famous trio. How convenient that you are all together. Professor McGonagall wants you in her office immediately," the man sneered down, or up in Ron's case, at them.  
  
Together they left the hall and made their way to her office, Filch trailing not far behind. After some negligible quarrelling they knocked on the solid oak door together, multiple Davids bearding the bespectacled lioness in her den.  
  
"Come in," the voice, stiff with chilly formality and cold even for McGonagall, cut and sliced open their façade of calm expectation. Reluctantly Harry turned the knob and entered, the others following.  
  
Before the door closed behind them McGonagall's eyes darted past Hermione's head, "Argus, I do not believe you were invited to the meeting."   
  
"But wouldn't you be needing-"  
  
"No," crisp refusal.  
  
"Or what about the-"  
  
"No, Argus," a flat dismissal tinged with tired irritation, "All aspects of this meeting are quite within my capacities."  
  
Filch submitted regretfully resentfully, and gracelessly, but at last he did leave. His absence however left a gaping hole, which could only be filled by the accusation voiced already in their professor's eyes. Hermione, the one most comfortable with the transfiguration teacher, broached the silence, "What are we called down for?"  
  
"You came in after curfew last night," the seventh years swung around to see the fat lady from the portrait hole entrance to Gryffindor tower sitting malevolently and superciliously in a side picture frame, her pink dress clashing ludicrously with McGonagall's prudent burgundy and off-white furnishings. Piggy eyes in a fleshy, powdered face glowered down at the teenagers as though they were the scum of the earth and if she were the pristine figure of righteousness that had brought them to justice.   
  
Professor McGonagall's neck tensed at the portrait's presumption, but she addressed the threesome with her tight, strictly controlled voice as usual, "Until contradictory evidence is found, you will be confined to the detention cells."  
  
As Filch appeared to lead them away, Ron muttered darkly,   
"So much for innocent until proven guilty."  
  
  
  



	12. Guardian Angel from Hell, Chapter Twelve

A/N and Disclaimer:  
Cloe: ::is snickering over some odd thing::   
Gryf: What's so funny?   
Cloe: Huh? Oh I dunno, my life, the conspiracy to drive me insane that was thought up by Gods?   
Cloe: Mmmmm, ::is trying not to drool over cute guys on TV::   
Gryf: Get a hold on yourself   
Gryf: Sorry this damn chapter took so long to get out   
Gryf: Truth be told, I hate school   
Gryf: ~looks at the drooling Cloe and shakes head~   
Cloe: I'm not dooling. I said 'trying not to' I never said I failed at it. Anyway its all Gryff's fault this chapter isn't out yet.   
Gryf: ~sticks out tongue~ Is it my fault that you refuse to beta these things?   
Cloe: Yes. We have lots of Writer friends, ask them. I need some Slash. Mmm ::goes to oogle the guys again::   
Gryf: Okay...um...yeah...   
Gryf: Characters you recognize don't belong to us, Circe belongs to Cloe   
Gryf: And the German guy you'll meet is all mine.   
Gryf: Circe goes under the influence and practically freezes her tits off   
Cloe: Oh so cultured. Way to be eloquent there.   
Gryf: That said, the next chapter will be out soon, I'm even done editing it, just need to write it out   
Gryf: Hey, you weren't exactly saying anything!   
Gryf: ~takes a 2x4 and wacks Cloe over the head with it~   
Gryf: ~leaves~   
Cloe: ::dodges it:: Hey!   
Cloe: ::drags her back by the scruff of her collar::   
Gryf: ~grumbles~   
Cloe: Anyway. Yes we are still here. No we are not dead. And no it will not be another month till the next part is out.... it'll be longer. Ha just kidding.   
Gryf: Ha ha haaa...yeah...bad joke   
Cloe: ::sticks her tongue out::   
Gryf: ~sticks tongue out right back at her~   
Cloe: Yeah. Okay. I think we've put on enough of a show tonight, so lets wrap this puppy up. Gryf: Okay...um...how bout a poll?   
Gryf: People, in reviews, guess who Ginny likes   
Cloe: Yeah and if you do we'll add your name in the next AN   
Gryf: Don't cheat and look back at the second chapter, because that answer is wrong   
Cloe: Er yeah. What she said.   
Gryf: ~smirks~   
Gryf: Are we done yet?   
Cloe: Yes we are done. Back to searching for fics for me and you to.... whatever you do.   
Gryf: ~smirks~ Read more fics than you do   
Cloe: How would you know?   
Cloe: Hell thats all I do, all day, everyday. 24/7/365.   
Gryf: ~grins~   
Cloe: Anyway we are done that's it, shut up, good bye, cease speaking, yeah.   
  
******************  
Guardian Angel from Hell  
Chapter Twelve, Wait, what was this one about? I forgot.   
  
A Harry Potter Fanfiction  
By Gryffith and Cloe  
******************  
  
Chapter Twelve  
  
  
Circe brushed away the large fluffy snowflakes accumulating on her hair, eyebrows, and lashes. Her butt shifted numbly on her broom; flying all day had frozen and numbed her entire body, especially as the invisibility cloak offered no warmth or shields from the biting wind whatsoever. Taking a refreshing dip in the prefect's bathroom that Dumbledore had restored right before going out in this weather was not a good idea; now frost rimed her skin and hair and coated the blood that oozed out of her cracked lips. Her eyes strained for sight of Hedwig, and her lips clumsily cursed whoever had had the stupidity to buy a white owl, as seeing white against gray sky and white clouds changed from merely difficult to impossible. Before, sending a message to Sirius and then following the messenger had seemed to be genius, but then the blizzard had started and worsened, steadily decreasing her visibility.  
  
Circe's quick and agile broom, her Zephyr, was a play thing for the howling, maddened winds. Gusts of wind snatched control from Circe and then battered her resistance with barrage after barrage of sleet and hail, taking the girl on a frantic, freezing roller coaster ride. After a series of stomach-roiling spins that left a barely conscious Circe clinging miserably to her broom, the winds suddenly stopped and let the girl on the broom, limp from cold and exhaustion, hurtle from the sky towards the glistening whiteness below.  
  
* * *  
  
Ron rattled the manacles that chained him to the cell wall, irritated by the injustice and resigned by the boredom that goes hand in hand with the passing hours. He sighed, "Why does McGonagall have to be so blind? Isn't it obvious that we didn't do it?"  
  
"No, Ron, it isn't. We were out after curfew, and that is pretty incriminating, considering. Not to mention the fact that none of our records are perfectly clean," Hermione replied imperturbably.  
  
"It's still not fair. And why did Filch have to put me in chains and not you?"   
  
Hermione looked up from her cell across the hall and could easily see her friend, separated as they were by only a gate of lead pipes, a hallway, and another gate, "Oh stop it, Ron. It's your own fault that you were put in chains," she waved her unencumbered arms for emphasis.  
  
Harry snorted, wishing that he could see Hermione as well, but the wall dividing them was solid stone and cement. "Yeah, what kind of idiot taunts Filch for being a squib as an argument for mistreatment?"  
  
"Hey! It's not my fault he took our wands away."  
  
"That is not a relevant excuse, Ron," Hermione scolded. "And how do you know that Filch is a squib anyway?"  
  
Ron started speaking pompously, but Harry cut him off, "I told him, and I really shouldn't have."  
  
"Ah well," Hermione leaned against the wall, "Circe was right about you when she called you a hothead."  
  
"Don't talk to me about her," Ron snapped.  
  
"Well aren't we full of ourselves! This isn't about you, you know. Just because you're heartbroken doesn't mean you have to be churlish about it," Hermione snapped.  
  
"Who's heartbroken? Doesn't the fact that she took off with Harry's invisibility cloak right after a serious break-in mean anything to you?" Ron demanded.  
  
"Circumstantial evidence!" she retorted.  
  
"Why are you defending her, Herm?" Harry piped up, futilely trying to stop the fight.  
  
Hermione sighed, thinking of the horoscope, of Circe's promise to save Harry, of Circe's obvious resentment for Draco, of her guess at Harry's true feelings. Hermione almost forgot Circe as she remembered that… even if she loved Harry and he reciprocated the feelings, if that was possible, she couldn't indulge…this year of all years she had to have her head clear…  
  
"She's defending her just to spite me!" Ron spat.  
  
"Don't draw conclusions, Ron. There's only circumstantial evidence against Circe!" Hermione glared daggers across the hall.  
  
"So? It's enough isn't it?"  
  
"It's enough, isn't it?" Hermione mocked, "So it's enough to convict Circe with circumstantial evidence while it is completely unfair for the school to hold us on the same amount of equally incriminating evidence. Hypocrite!"   
  
"She's a Malfoy!" Ron spat.  
  
"You're a Weasley! So what? Who cares?" she asked.  
  
"Who cares?!" Ron repeated furiously, his face livid, "The Malfoys are legendary for connections to the dark arts! She's no different!"  
  
"And how would you know that? Are you this new expert on emotions and personalities? How come I never heard of it before?" Hermione asked sarcastically. Harry winced; she could be as biting as any Malfoy. For some adverse reason he admired her for it.  
  
"Oh? And do you know something I don't? What proof do you have that she's not evil!" Ron demanded.  
  
Hermione sat down, "Motives," she said simply. "She is quite in earnest about wanting to save Harry's life."  
  
"Then why did she raid the school?" Ron challenged  
  
"How do you know she did?" Hermione countered, ginger brown eyes blazing.  
  
"How do we know she didn't?" Ron counter-countered.  
  
"Quit being so immature, Ron," Hermione scolded. "Look at the facts. She dyes her hair. She pulls pranks…and I believe she idolizes your twin brothers? Now, would Draco idolize any Weasley? Would Draco dye his hair?"  
  
"If Daddy Malfoy told him to, yes," Ron retorted.  
  
Hermione sighed, "That's probably why Draco is so bad in the first place. If Draco was raised…by your mother for example, do you think he would still be in Slytherin? I mean, even if he is a Malfoy, he's still human. If he wasn't under his father's thumb, he'd probably in Gryffindor. I mean, thinking objectively, Draco is actually pretty hot."   
  
Harry's eyes bulged. Draco Malfoy hot? Circe was cute, but Draco? He shuddered.  
  
"BLASPHEMY!" Ron hollered.  
  
"Just because you're a guy doesn't mean you have to be a biased, pedantic idiot. Draco would be different if he wasn't a Malfoy. And Circe, unlike Draco, is fighting it. She is trying to be anything but Malfoy! She's in Gryffindor! She's trying to save Harry's life!" Hermione crossed her arms over her chest.  
  
A jingling echoed in the hallway and a female voice chirped, "I agree with the first part, but what's all this about Malfoy?"  
  
Harry jumped up and tried to look sideways through the bars. "Ginny? What are you doing here?"  
  
Ginny smiled and jingled the keys again, "What else? The burglar was caught, so you guys are home free."  
  
Ron tried to see his sister's face, "She was? Where is she?"  
  
"She? Who said it was a she? Ron, are you having an affair that I don't know about?" Ginny teased. Harry frowned.  
  
"Shut up," Ron muttered sulkily as both girls smirked at him.  
  
* * *  
  
Circe, unaware of the argument concerning her sincerity happening several hundred miles away, groaned. She must have blacked out when she had crashed through the blanket of snow-covered tree branches because she didn't remember hitting the ground. The contents from her bag lay scattered all over the crunchy two feet thick mantle of snow, but she let them stay there for the moment since the wind had stopped. Grumbling to herself, she sat up, shivering, and forced to the front of her mind the survival techniques her maternal grandfather had forced all his grandchildren to learn. First she had to find a way to warm herself and prevent frostbite. Doggedly she gathered branches and, using a number of ineffectual spells, lit the pile into a crackling blaze. Once she had that going Circe huddled beside it and wondered dolefully what she would do now. She had lost Hedwig and was completely lost herself. She must have crossed the English Channel by now, if the length of the ride was any proof, but Circe sighed; she could be anywhere from the plains of Normandy to Switzerland. Even as she considered her situation, she felt disgusted and ashamed of her feeble attempts at the fire.  
  
Determined to redeem herself, Circe decided to practice the spells that she knew of the Dark Arts. The extent of her knowledge pleased her. She had made better use of the times Grandfather Malfoy had locked his grandchildren in his book-filled attic than either of her brothers, even ambitious Lazarus. Either way she lifted her wand and pointed it at the sky, chanting, "Morsmordre!"  
  
The Dark Mark shimmered into existence, immense and inexorable and imposing, but for all the cryptic and malicious details of the initial conjuring, Circe lost control. At first glance an ignorant passerby might have admired the impressive green snake protruding from the skull's mouth; Circe could feel the waves of sinister magic like the heat from an enormous oven; but then the conjuration morphed into a peach-colored octopus tentacle with yellow suckers while the skull itself shone blue and lavender. The moonlight left a golden sheen that reminded Circe of an iridescent Muggle nail polish. Before the not so Dark Mark could deform any further, the entire fiasco popped like a paper bag and faded out, the end of a spectacular fireworks display with the dying embers hovering on the wind.   
  
Circe, seeing not the splendor but only the embarrassing failure, grimaced and concentrated on the skill that she knew she could always fall back on: transfiguration. By merely pointing her wand, she changed a heap of snowballs into a giant hot water bottle that she could lay on and meshed dead leaves from the branches into coarse blankets. She was about to change an oversized tree into a shelter when a stinging sensation invaded her neck. The pain spread throughout her body like a burning acid in her veins, settling as throbbing infernos in her ankle and wand arm and as torrents of liquid flame flooding through her blood vessels. Whenever her skin touched magical or enchanted items, including the ensorcelled blankets, it first tingled, then numbed and deadened.   
  
After the few seconds in which all this occurred, Circe leapt up, clawing at the pain. "What the bloody hell is going on!?" she cried, whipping her head around in case an enemy be near by. The magical items in her many pants pockets started to burn through the cloth, or at least that's how it felt. In a desperate attempt to rid herself of the agony, Circe hopped and clawed her way out of her pants, taking off her footwear along with it. Immediately she began slapping at the rest of her body, futilely trying to somehow squash the pain.   
  
Slapping at her neck, her had landed on a smooth lump on her neck. With a horrified cry she ripped it off and found herself face to face with a hemispheric beetle, fully two inches in diameter, with silver outer wings sprinkled with black, white, and gold specks. Olive green ooze dripped from a hole, positioned slightly below a point from which two antennae wiggled spasmodically, and sizzled in the snow. Circe realized aversely that a proboscis or a nozzle must still be in her neck. So she sent the fingers of her other hand to probe around and pulled out a shiny black tube about the size and shape of a needle, the tip of which was coated with a blend of red and green liquid.  
  
"SHIT!" Circe threw the proboscis to the ground and began hopping around again, eventually glanced her now bare and unprotected toes on some of the objects from her purse. Looking down she glared at a pack of glass jars used to house specimens. Eyebrows rising, Circe crouched down and unscrewed the lid from one jar with fingers made clumsy from pain, immediately flung the beetle into the jar, and screwed it on again tightly.   
  
Circe now rummaged through her scattered possessions, pain mincing her every movement, looking for something to extinguish or at least lessen the pain. Her fingers stumbled upon a small bag…the mushrooms. The fungi were cut up finely, dotted with little pearly balls the size of a needlepoint and dusted with some type of white powder…but Circe couldn't remember if the friend of her grandfather's, an addicted drug-dealer, had laced the mushrooms with LSD, PCP, or some other type of drug, and even if the fungi were laced, Circe couldn't care less, as long as they did away with the pain. Throwing all these concerns to the wind, Circe crammed the fungi plants into her mouth and chewed eagerly. Relishing the prospect of painlessness, Circe swallowed impatiently, but even before the fungi was completely through her esophagus Circe felt an elating head rush as whatever drug it was took effect.   
  
Sensations of power and invincibility tingled down her arms, the pain drowning in pure euphoria. The night sky visible above the tree branches glowed in reds and oranges and yellows, and greens and purples…Circe basked in the glory of herself and her world. The freezing, biting snow couldn't touch her, the burning pain couldn't touch her, and nothing could hold her down! She turned around and the trees that had been behind her…there were no trees! There were huge, marble Ionic pillars planted in billowing white pillows to honor her! Surrounding her were these giant pillars supporting green velvet curtains and white lace, all for her! She ruled the world! Circe ran nimbly between all of these columns as though she could run through them, over them, beneath them, as if they weren't even there. Then…red trickled over her vision and one of the pillars morphed in front of her eyes, like a marble statue taking the polyjuice potion, into a giant Ron…no it was Bixby! No…was it Ron with a ponytail?…they looked so much alike…Circe shrieked as all the other pillars erupted, spurting tongues of gold and crimson flames turbulently swelling larger and larger, spurting and gushing out to her. The heat intensified, breaking Circe into a burning sweat. In an effort to cool herself off Circe tore off her cloak, her shirt, every strip of clothing she wore. The redhead's face, complete with those gold-flecked brown eyes, freckles, prominent nose, sturdy jawbone, and frowning furrowed eyebrows, glared down at her, emitting growls and disappointed sighs.   
  
"What have you done? What are you doing? Why did you leave me? Where did you go?" The Weasley's lips shuffled uncoordinated with the words, but Circe felt the pleading in them, the condemnation, the pity, the entreaty.   
  
She tried to back away from the face but the palisades of flames caged her in, the fingers of glowing orange seizing her arms, yanking her here and there…pillars morphed into Father, white disdain, Lazarus, dark menace, Cane, looming intimidation, Mother, bleak protocol, Grandfather, evil incarnate, Harry Potter, disappointed confusion, Hermione Granger, furious censure, Professor Granger, saddened frustration, Professor Lupin, distraught injury, and worst of all Professor Dumbledore, quiet judgment.  
  
Circe whirled around, trying to run from their glowers but thwarted at every corner by another face, first Professor Granger, then Lazarus, and then back to Ron/Bixby again. Hugging his legs, as she only came up to his knees, Circe bawled and sobbed up to the colossal man…or boy…Ron or Bixby???   
  
A distant, detached part of Circe's mind watched her mortify herself this way, but her body no longer responded to or even acknowledged that part so that part could not prevent Circe from wailing, "I didn't mean to leave you! I love you! Why do you hate me?!!! I hate you! I didn't mean to leave you…!"  
  
Two figures cloaked in black manifested into the little grove of trees and ogled at the blond girl, her body stripped of every scrap of clothing, breasts hard and small, her arms and legs dead white. Her body now was stumbling to the far end of the clearing, arms flailing, then stopped at a large elm tree and she hugged it, all the while wailing incoherent hard consonant sounds followed by wobbly vowels. The lankier of the two stooped to examine the paraphernalia scattered on the edge of the clearing while the stockier swiftly crossed the clearing to see to the girl. Up close, the figure could see stark white skin, in the process of freezing, the swollen feet and hands, the bright red cuts all over her body that weren't bleeding because the blood flow was so sluggish. Absently, the figure lowered the fur-lined hood, revealing the square face, shaggy straw-colored hair and clear indigo eyes of a man, or even a teenager if one were to judge by the size of the nose.   
  
"Hey!" he approached her cautiously, not wanting to get to near the apparently psycho girl. No response whatsoever. Her face did turn toward him briefly, due to whatever mad delirium she was going through, and he gasped at the blood dribbling down her face from a jagged and dirty gash on her forehead. Maybe a rabid dog bit her? Automatically, in a parent-like fashion he grabbed her arm and twirled her around for a better look. Within seconds he was flying through the air, slamming into another tree trunk.   
  
The other figure glanced up at the thud, "Halt!" His voices grated harshly in the dry chill air. A large tanned hand, with several black hairs growing across the back, held up the packet that still held a few fungi chunks. "Lothar, she's chemically altered right now."  
  
Lothar, bracing himself against the tree, stood up and walked over to join the older figure. Taking the offered packet, he pinched a small chunk between his thumb and forefinger then sniffed it, "Hallucinogenic drugs. Where'd she get 'em?" Lothar reported, his words flavored by a heavy German accent.  
  
"You're the native here, I haven't the slightest."  
  
The blond shrugged, "Who knows. She's probably some crackhead from Amsterdam dumped here as a bad joke. She's got a nasty cut on her forehead."  
  
"How do you figure Amsterdam?"  
  
Lothar raised an eyebrow, "You magic folks sure aren't caught up in the world. Everything's legal in Amsterdam. Even prostitution. They sell drug samples in coffee shops. Everyone knows that."  
  
"Every muggle, you mean. And if all "magic folks" are as ignorant as you say, then this girl must be as clueless as I am. Not only is there a large amount of magic items here, she has a remarkable resemblance to Narcissa… a woman I went to school with. If I didn't know that Draco was an only child, I'd swear that she was his twin."  
  
"Who's Nar…er, who's this Draco fella?"  
  
"Never mind. We need to figure out a way to sedate the girl."  
  
"Either that or warm her up. I'd guess that all of her fingers and probably her feet are frostbitten. Another hour or so and she'll be frozen solid."  
  
The older man shook his head in dismay, "Why did she let herself in for this? She's a witch!"  
  
"A witch, huh? Well witches are just as human as muggles are, aren't they? And if she is a witch, would this be the one that did that dark mark thing you were talking about?" Lothar asked dubiously. The wizard started to answer, but Lothar waved his hand, "Never mind, just do some magic or whatever."  
  
The older man lowered his hood, revealing his shaggy black hair, thick craggy eyebrows, scruffy black beard, and bottomless black eyes, contrasting severely with the whites of his eyes and his pale skin. He made a face at the other man, mimicking Lothar's bossy attitude in a tiny voice like a child, his usually intimidating features made grotesque by the infantile mockery. Nevertheless, he raised the fifteen inch ebony wand and pointed it at the girl, "Therma Mysci."  
  
The screech the girl released, as loud as a professional yodel, panicked the wizard into fumbling for the counter spell. Even though she screamed all the more loudly when it hit her, the high agonized pitch died away and the girl dropped to her knees, then to the ground, collapsing from the pain.  
  
"What the bloody hell went wrong?!" the wizard demanded of his wand vulnerably. Shrugging, he bent down to examine the randomly scattered items on the ground in hopes of some clues, joined shortly by Lothar, who automatically began making mental observations out of habit. The little jar containing the beetle attracted young man's attention by the frantic buzzing and clanging going on inside of it, so he picked it up to examine it, then pocketed it for later examination in deference to the girl.   
  
"Aren't you going to help her?!" he demanded.  
  
The wizard looked up, "I'm not in the habit of helping idiots."  
  
"If all wizards are like you, then I'm glad I don't know them, unsympatisch Barbar," Lothar muttered and took off his cloak to wrap around the naked girl. Scooping her up in his arms, he turned to the wizard briefly, "I'm going to bring her to the cave and save her life. Please bring in her clothes and things to the cave, then I'll go into town and buy a Schlafsack-"  
  
"A what?"  
  
"Ein Schlafsack. A sleeping bag."  
  
The wizard eyed the limp figure in Lothar's arms suspiciously for a few minutes, then replied thoughtfully, "No…don't bother. Let her have my bed, I need to do some traveling."  
  
Lothar in turn narrowed his eyes, "Where are you going?"  
  
"Eh…to visit some…friends."  
  
Lothar muttered under his breath in German before replying, "Sure, go ahead. In that case, just pile all of the magic items up and I'll collect them-"  
  
The wizard shoveled up the various things, using the pants as a bag, and dumped the bundle on her stomach, "Save her life if you will. If you have…problems, I will be closer than you know."  
  
Hefting the girl, Lothar grunted affirmatively, "And that's what I'm afraid of, Herr Schwarz."  
  
The wizard smirked at the younger man, his menacing black eyes and furrowed brow belying the benign smile. "And sometimes it is right to fear, Muggle. I'll collect what I need and be off."  
  
Taking broad, lanky strides up through a labyrinth of giant pine trees and enormous oaks, the wizard disappeared uphill while Lothar followed more guardedly, weighted down by his burden.   
  
******  
  
Until next time.... (whenever that is) 


End file.
